ill!! 


Itii 


F^n   -s  1915 


BR   121    .M25    1914 

McConnell,    Francis   John, 

1871-1953. 

Personal  Christianity, 

inpttrnmpntc:    7^r\c\    pn<i<:;     -in 

thp 

Personal  Christianity 


THE  COLE  LECTURES 

igi4 
Personal  Christianity 

By  Bishop  Francis  J.  McConnell. 

Cloth net  1.25 

The  God  We  Trust 

By  G.  A.  Johnston  Ross. 

Cloth net  1.25 

igi2 
What  Does  Christianity  Mean  ? 

By  W.  H.  P.  Faunce. 

Cloth net  1.25 

igii 
Some  Great  Leaders  in  the 
World  Movement 

By  Robert  E.  Speer. 

Cloth net  1.25 

igio 
In  the  School  of  Christ 

By  Bishop  William  Fraser  McDowell. 

Cloth net  1.25 

igog 
Jesus  the  Worker 

By  Charles  McTyeire  Bishop,  D.  D. 

Cloth net  1.25 

igo8 
The  Fact  of  Conversion 

By  George  Jackson,  B.  A. 

Cloth net  1.25 

igor 
God's  Message  to  the  Human  Soul 

By  John   Watson    (Ian  Maclaren).     The  Colt  Lectures 

prepared  hut  not  delivered. 

Cloth net  1.25 

igo6 
Christ  and  Science 

By  Francis  Henry  Smith,  University  of  Virginia. 
Cloth net  1.25 

1905 

The   Universal    Elements  of  the 
Christian  Religion 

By  Charles  Cuthbert  Hall. 

Cloth net  1.25 

igo3 
The  Religion  of  the  Incarnation 

By  Bishop  Eugene  Russell  Hendrix. 

Cloth net  i.oo 


A"^' 


v^  (       FEB   fi 

The    Cole    Lectures  for  igi4         \      y, 

deli'vered  before  Vanderbilt  Uni'versity 


Personal  Christianity 

Instruments  and  Ends  in 
the    Kingdom    of  God 


FRANCIS  J.  McCONNELL 

One  of  the  Bishops  of  the  Methodist 
Episcopal  Church 


New     York  Chicago  Toronto 

Fleming     H.     Revell     Company 
London  and  Edinburgh 


Copyright,  igM,  by 
FLEMING  H.  REVELL  COMPANY 


New  York:  158  Fifth  Avenue 
Chicago:  125  North  Wabash  Ave. 
Toronto:  25  Richmond  Street,  W. 
London:  21  Paternoster  Square 
Edinburgh:      100    Princes    Street 


To 

Dean    Wilbur    F.    Ti/ktt 
a  Statesman  of  the  Church 


THE  COLE  LECTURES 

THE  late  Colonel  E.  W.  Cole  of  Nashville,  Ten- 
nessee, donated  to  Vanderbilt  University  the  sum 
of  five  thousand  dollars,  afterwards  increased  by 
Mrs.   E.  W.  Cole  to  ten  thousand,  the  design  and  con- 
ditions of  which  gift  are  stated  as  follows  : 

"  The  object  of  this  fund  is  to  establish  a  foundation 
for  a  perpetual  Lectureship  in  connection  with  the  Bib- 
lical Department  of  the  University,  to  be  restricted  in  its 
scope  to  a  defense  and  advocacy  of  the  Christian  re- 
ligion. The  lectures  shall  be  delivered  at  such  inter- 
vals, from  time  to  time,  as  shall  be  deemed  best  by  the 
Board  of  Trust ;  and  the  particular  theme  and  lecturer 
shall  be  determined  by  nomination  of  the  Theological 
Faculty  and  confirmation  of  the  College  of  Bishops  of 
the  Methodist  Episcopal  Church,  South.  Said  lecture 
shall  always  be  reduced  to  writing  in  full,  and  the  man- 
uscript of  the  same  shall  be  the  property  of  the  Univer- 
sity, to  be  published  or  disposed  of  by  the  Board  of 
Trust  at  its  discretion,  the  net  proceeds  arising  there- 
from to  be  added  to  the  foundation  fund,  or  otherwise 
used  for  the  benefit  of  the  Biblical  Department." 


Prefatory  Note 


THE  word  "  personal "  as  used  in 
these  lectures  does  not  mean  '*  in- 
dividual." Two  views  of  the  hu- 
man beings  whom  we  actually  know  are 
about  equally  mistaken.  Extreme  individ- 
ualism spins  theories  about  human  life  with 
each  life  taken  by  itself  in  a  separateness  and 
independence  never  realized  or  realizable  on 
earth.  On  the  other  hand  the  extreme  doc- 
trine of  society  as  an  organism  is  likewise 
faulty.  Society  is  not  literally  an  organism. 
The  concrete  fact  is  persons  living  in  such 
dependence  upon  one  another  that  we  can 
call  them  members  of  one  another  more  fit- 
tingly than  we  can  speak  of  them  as  mem- 
bers of  a  social  organism, — an  organism,  by 
the  way,  which  lacks  so  essential  a  feature 
of  organic  life  as  a  head.  The  social  con- 
sciousness is  not  a  consciousness  grasped  by 
one  all-inclusive  mind.  The  social  conscious- 
ness is  personal  consciousnesses  knit  together 
in  sympathetic  community.  It  is  the  purpose 
of  these  lectures  to  show  that  persons,  existing 
on  earth  in  intimate  interdependence,  are 
9 


lO  PREFATORY   NOTE 

ends-in-themselves  in  the  kingdom  of  God  on 
earth,  and  that  all  things  else, — books,  creeds, 
rituals,  organizations, — are  instrumental,  with 
only  such  sacredness  as  can  attach  to  instru- 
ments. Persons  alone  are  sacred  in  their 
own  inherent  right.  It  might  have  been  bet- 
ter to  use  the  word  **  human "  instead  of 
"  personal,"  except  that  "  personal "  seems 
more  fundamental ;  and  it  may  appear  early 
in  the  course  of  the  discussion  that  the  value 
set  on  the  personal  in  human  life  comes 
largely  from  conceiving  in  personal  terms 
the  God  who  is  set  before  us  as  the  Father 
in  Heaven  by  the  personal  revelation  in 
Jesus. 

F.  J.  MCCONNELL. 
Denver,  Colo. 


Contents 

I.  The  Personal  in  Christianity         .       1 3 

II.  The  Instrumental  in  Christianity       55 

III.  The  Christian  Use  of  the  Philo- 

sophic Tools      ....      97 

IV.  On  Making  Morality  Human         .     1 39 

V.  Ends    and    Means    in  Social  En- 

deavour       183 

VI.  Every  Kindred  and  People  and 

Tongue 225 


II 


LECTURE  I 
THE  PERSONAL  IN  CHRISTIANITY 


LECTURE  I 
THE  PERSONAL  IN  CHRISTIANITY 

IN  a  familiar  Gospel  passage  Jesus  is 
represented  as  stooping  and  writing 
upon  the  ground.  Thoughtful  Bible 
readers  stop  for  the  moment  as  they  come 
to  the  passage.  The  direct  question  as  to 
what  Jesus  wrote  has  interest  of  course  only 
for  the  curious :  the  real  reason  why  the 
mind  of  the  reader  hesitates  and  ponders  is 
that  this  is  the  only  passage  which  mentions 
Jesus  as  in  the  act  of  writing.  The  scene 
is  suggestive,  not  merely  because  it  reveals 
Jesus'  tact  in  a  very  delicate  situation,  but 
because  by  its  very  solitariness  it  prompts  us 
to  reflect  upon  the  absence  of  the  artificial  in 
all  His  work  as  a  teacher.  The  impression 
made  by  the  New  Testament  portraiture  is 
of  a  teacher  who  relied  not  at  all  upon  the 
conventional  scholastic  methods, — the  use  of 
books,  the  citation  of  authorities,  the  dicta- 
tion of  instructions  to  be  written  down  for 
study  and  preservation.  In  this  absence  of 
the  artificial  the  school  of  Christ  was  different 
15 


l6  PERSONAL  CHRISTIANITY 

from  schools  with  which  we  are  familiar  and 
from  schools  with  which  Christ  was  familiar. 
The  method  of  Jesus  seems  to  have  been  that 
of  direct  contact  of  the  teacher  with  his 
pupils.  We  are  not  to  miss  the  force  of  this 
consideration  by  supposing  that  the  method 
of  direct  contact,  with  everything  artificial 
reduced  to  the  very  least  possible,  was  the 
inevitable  procedure  of  a  time  which  had 
little  opportunity  for  the  use  of  books  and 
writings.  As  a  matter  of  history  the  inves- 
tigations of  men  like  Sir  William  Ramsay 
have  shown  that  reliance  upon  writing  in  the 
days  of  Jesus  was  much  more  common  than 
we  have  realized.  The  period  during  which 
Christ  lived  was  a  period  of  very  prolific 
writing  both  in  school  and  out.  It  will  be  re- 
membered that  Professor  Ramsay  finds  letter 
correspondence  to  have  been  then  so  easy 
to  all  sorts  of  people  that  he  is  confident  that 
some  parts  of  the  Gospel  must  have  been  set 
to  parchment  by  the  followers  of  Jesus  within 
a  very  few  weeks  after  the  crucifixion.  The 
existence  of  a  rather  elaborate  mail  system 
seems  to  point  to  a  very  prevalent  habit  of 
writing  throughout  the  Roman  Empire  in 
the  time  of  Christ. 

Jesus,  we  repeat,  does  not  seem  to  have 
relied  upon  the  artificial  helps  of  the  schools 


THE   PERSONAL   IN   CHRISTIANITY        1 7 

of  His  time.  Passing  to  matters  of  larger 
consequence  than  the  suggestive  incident  of 
the  writing  on  the  ground  we  know  that  His 
mind  was  evidendy  steeped  in  Scriptural  ex- 
pression, but  He  does  not  seem  to  have 
appealed  to  authority  as  did  the  scribes.  He 
does  not  even  seem  to  have  been  concerned 
about  casting  His  thought  into  systematic 
form.  System  of  some  sort  He  no  doubt  had, 
but  there  is  nothing  to  suggest  the  system  of 
the  schools  of  His  time  or  of  later  time.  The 
thought  of  Jesus  unfolded  largely  as  does  the 
thought  of  other  leaders,  pushed  along  by  an 
inner  logic  and  by  the  pressure  of  outer 
events.  The  thought  of  Jesus  moreover  was 
of  that  compelling  kind  which  produced 
crises  in  the  minds  of  those  who  heard  Him 
speak ;  it  seems  possible  to  trace  the  order  of 
some  of  these  crises  in  the  narratives  which 
have  come  down  to  us, — but  there  is  little  to 
suggest  formal  arrangement.  If  it  be  urged 
that  in  the  Gospels  we  are  dealing  not  with 
the  form  in  which  Jesus  actually  uttered  His 
truth,  but  with  the  reports  which  have  come 
from  those  who  were  His  disciples,  the  ready 
reply  is  that  we  must  think  it  strange  that 
One  who  could  so  impress  His  hearers  that 
they  caught  the  depth  and  might  and  beauty 
of  His  thought  was  powerless  to  stamp  their 


l8  PERSONAL  CHRISTIANITY 

minds  with  the  system  in  which  the  thought 
was  cast, — if  there  had  been  a  system.  To 
see  what  the  rabbinic  system  could  do  with 
Christian  thought  we  have  only  to  turn  to 
the  words  of  Paul.  Paul  had  seized  the 
essentials  of  Christianity,  but  at  least  at 
times  he  ran  these  to  forms  which  he  had 
inherited  from  the  schools.  And  the  en- 
kindUng  warmth  and  life  of  the  Christian 
spirit  are  not  able  to  free  the  Pauline  system 
from  the  suggestion  of  artificiality  which  here 
and  there  clings  to  it.  When  the  modern 
compiler  of  Biblical  hand-books  attempts  to 
arrange  in  schematic  form  the  teaching  of 
Jesus,  the  oudines  and  the  diagrams,  help- 
ful as  they  no  doubt  may  be,  contain  but 
meagerly  the  spirit  and  vividness  of  the 
Gospel  narrative  itself.  To  put  the  case 
rather  extremely  it  would  almost  seem  that 
the  teaching  of  Jesus  was  incidental  to  His 
life  with  the  disciples.  Jesus  lived  with  the 
disciples,  and  as  He  lived  with  them  spoke 
to  them  of  God  and  of  men  and  of  the  duties 
of  life.  The  main  fact  in  their  thought,  after 
it  was  all  over,  seems  not  to  have  been  the 
teaching  as  teaching.  They  remembered,  or 
rather  felt  still  the  impact  of  a  life  which  was 
more  than  teaching. 

Moreover   Jesus   does   not   seem  to  have 


THE   PERSONAL   IN   CHRISTIANITY       I9 

Spoken  voluminously.  He  does  not  seem 
to  have  been  in  the  customary  sense  of  the 
word  a  ''  talker."  A  shrewd  observer  once 
remarked  that  in  a  realm  of  perfect  mutual 
understanding,  such  as  we  may  conceive 
heaven  to  be,  speech  would  be  needless. 
There  might  be  silence  in  heaven  for  much 
more  than  the  space  of  half  an  hour,  for  each 
mind  would  enter  into  such  complete  under- 
standing of  companion  minds  that  an  artifi- 
cial instrument  like  speech  would  be  superflu- 
ous. There  is  enough  in  this  fancy  to  remind 
us  that  the  less  of  living  sympathy  there  is 
between  two  minds  the  more  there  must  be 
of  reliance  upon  a  mechanism  like  language. 
Some  lives  themselves  mea7i  truths  which  we 
discern  as  soon  as  we  come  into  touch  with 
the  lives.  Some  faces  mean  and  teach  purity 
the  instant  we  look  upon  them.  Words  would 
be  superfluous  and  impertinent.  The  actual 
utterances  of  Jesus  as  recorded  do  not  of 
themselves  seem  adequate  in  amount  to  the 
impression  which  they  produced  upon  the 
minds  of  the  early  followers.  Or  rather  there 
is  even  to-day  so  much  more  in  the  words 
than  the  words  themselves,  there  is  such 
power  of  suggestiveness  and  such  quickness 
of  life,  that  the  words  seem  more  than  words. 
They  seem  to  carry  with  them  a  life  which  lifts 


20  PERSONAL   CHRISTIANITY 

them  at  once  out  of  the  realm  of  the  artificial 
and  instrumental.  Just  from  this  quality  in 
the  words  we  are  prepared  to  believe  the 
accounts  which  have  come  down  to  us  of 
manifestations  of  a  sheer  personal  force 
which  at  the  opening  of  the  career  of  Jesus 
caused  a  hostile  crowd  to  make  way  before 
Him  that  He  might  pass,  and  at  the  close 
of  His  career  caused  some  of  His  captors  to 
stumble  backward  to  the  ground. 

The  method  of  Jesus  seems  to  have  been 
to  gather  around  Him  a  few  lives  whom  He 
felt  to  be  receptive  and  responsive.  With 
these  men  He  lived.  Though  He  occasion- 
ally stepped  outside  to  minister  to  larger 
groups,  He  seems  for  the  most  part  to  have 
given  Himself  to  the  smaller  group  and  to 
have  started  the  new  stream  of  life  by  living 
constantly  with  a  few  men  who  did  not 
master  His  teaching  in  a  formal  fashion,  but 
who  breathed  the  very  spirit  of  His  life.  His 
plan  was  not  that  of  the  preacher  or  the 
lecturer.  He  moved  through  the  ordinary 
rounds  with  His  disciples,  and  by  His  attitude 
towards  the  ordinary  lifted  their  thought  to 
the  higher.  If  He  gave  any  hints  at  all  as 
to  how  the  lessons  of  the  kingdom  were  to  be 
learned  the  instruction  was  that  men  were  to 
**  do  "  the  words  which  they  had  heard,  work- 


THE   PERSONAL   IN   CHRISTIANITY       21 

ing  them  into  their  inmost  lives.     Or  they 
were  to  take  up  the  cross  daily  and  by  sym- 
pathy with  cross-bearers  come  into  under- 
standing of   the  cross  of   the  Son  of  God. 
More   significant   still   is   a  sentence  in  the 
Fourth  Gospel  to  the  effect  that  if  men  would 
bear  much  fruit  they  would  indeed  become 
His    disciples.     We   are   not  troubling  our- 
selves here  with  the  critical  question  as  to 
how  far  the  Fourth  Gospel  actually  records 
the  words  of  Jesus.     The  conception  set  forth 
in  this  passage  is  essentially  in  harmony  with 
the  total  picture  of  Jesus  which  has  come 
down  to  us, — it  forms  a  consistent  part  of 
that   picture.     The  meaning  appears  to  be 
that  Jesus  looked  upon  the  Christian  lessons 
that  men  learn  as  coming  out  of  such  a  life 
process  as  the  fruit-bearing  of  a  tree.     Let  a 
man   bring   forth  the  fruit  of  righteousness 
and  service  and  this  experience  itself  will  be 
full  of  interpreting  wisdom  for  him.     In  our 
day  we  say  that  only  the  ideas  which  grow 
are  worth  while.     The  ideas  which  are  in  any 
sense   artificially  imparted  from  the  outside 
are    not   as   significant  as  those  which  are 
ripened  from  within  by  a  life  process  as  fruit 
is  ripened.     The  ideas  which  mean  most  to 
us  are  the  ideas  we  grow. 

In   fine   the   emphasis  of  the  Master  upon 


22  PERSONAL  CHRISTIANITY 

life  terms  which  we  find  both  in  the  Synoptics 
and  in  the  Fourth  Gospel  is  an  indication  of 
His  complete  freedom  from  the  artificial.  We 
can  make  but  little  of  His  thought  of  religion 
on  the  basis  of  the  system  of  the  scribes. 
The  outstanding  facts  in  this  present  world 
seemed  to  Jesus  to  be  persons  and  their 
needs.  When  He  taught  of  the  heavenly 
world  He  spoke  in  personal  terms.  Or 
rather  He  seemed  to  live  with  the  fact  of 
personal  contact  with  the  Father  in  heaven 
always  before  Him.  It  will  not  do  to  speak 
of  Jesus*  use  of  the  word  "  Father  "  as  ap- 
plied to  God  as  if  it  were  merely  the  best 
word  which  He  could  find,  and  as  if  back  of 
and  beyond  this  word  He  conceived  of  a  form 
of  existence  which  cannot  be  expressed  in  hu- 
man terms.  The  word  **  Father  "  on  the  lips  of 
Jesus  does  not  carry  the  suggestion  that  it  is 
merely  a  figure  of  speech.  Criticism  cannot 
thwart  this  conclusion  by  maintaining  that 
we  have  only  second  hand  reports  of  the 
words  of  Jesus  and  not  the  words  themselves. 
We  are  not  concerned  with  the  critical 
scruples,  for  we  are  not  raising  the  question 
as  to  ipsissimo  verba  of  Jesus.  We  are  con- 
cerned with  the  impression  which  He  left  on 
the  minds  of  His  followers.  If  He  used  the 
word  "  Father  "  merely  as  the  best  word  He 


THE  PERSONAL  IN   CHRISTIANITY       23 

could  find,  or  just  as  an  accommodation  to 
the  simple  intelligence  of  His  followers,  or  as 
a  figure  of  speech  to  symbolize  a  reality  out 
beyond.  He  succeeded  chiefly  in  getting  Him- 
self misunderstood.  For  He  sunk  that  word 
"  Father "  as  applied  to  God  so  deeply  into 
the  consciousness  of  His  followers  that  it  is 
one  of  the  unescapable  words  of  the  Gospel. 
The  Gospel  makes  the  word  exhaustive.  It 
is  impossible  for  us  to  believe  that  the  depth 
of  the  impression  made  upon  the  minds  of 
the  disciples  by  the  word  can  be  accounted 
for  by  any  merely  verbal  teaching  on  the  part 
of  Jesus,  or  that  Jesus  Himself  reached  the 
conception  of  God's  fatherhood  by  formal 
process.  Something  lay  back  there  in  the 
realm  of  the  personal  experience  of  Jesus 
which  accounts  for  the  meaning  of  the  word 
to  Him,  and  for  the  force  with  which  He 
sunk  the  word  into  the  life  of  the  disciples. 
"  God  the  Father "  was  a  conception  which 
He  not  only  thought  and  spoke  but  which 
He  acted  forth  and  which  awoke  definite  re- 
sponses in  His  feeling.  **  God  the  Father  " 
was  life  experience  with  Jesus,  and  this  ex- 
perience became  a  telling  force  with  the  dis- 
ciples. 

The  facts  lying  at  the  base  of  Christianity 
are  personal  facts.     Suppose  we  consider  for 


24  PERSONAL   CHRISTIANITY 

a  moment  that  problem  of  Christology  which 
has  been  the  lure  and  the  despair  of  Christian 
thinking  from  the  beginning.  The  moment 
we  use  any  term  ending  with  "  ology  "  w^e 
are  near  the  artificial.  Now  the  purpose  of 
this  series  of  lectures  is  to  show  that  the  arti- 
ficial has  its  place  and  a  great  place,  but  at 
present  we  insist  that  these  formal  terms 
have  very  little  in  kind  with  the  speech  of 
the  Master  or  with  the  speech  which  He  in- 
spired men  to  utter.  It  is  a  clear  gain  all 
around  that  we  see  so  clearly  to-day  that  all 
discussion  of  the  problem  of  the  person  of 
Christ  must  take  its  start  from  \h^fact  of  the 
person  of  Christ :  and  no  fact  seems  to  be 
more  stable  in  its  foundation  than  that  Jesus 
thought  of  Himself  as  the  Son  of  the  Father. 
Of  course  it  is  possible  for  the  exegete  to 
empty  everything  distinctive  from  this  word 
"  Son,"  and  to  make  the  title  little  more  than 
a  conventional  phrase,  which  Jesus  used  be- 
cause He  could  not  find  a  better.  But  here 
again  causes  must  be  adequate  to  their  ef- 
fects. We  can  hardly  see  how  a  merely 
conventional  phrase  could  have  meant  so 
much  for  the  followers  of  Jesus  both  in  earlier 
and  later  times  if  it  did  not  have  back  of  it 
something  potently  real.  A  suggestion  more 
in  line  with  what  we  should  expect  among 


THE  PERSONAL  IN   CHRISTIANITY       25 

groups  of  followers  as  we  know  them  would 
be  not  that  Jesus  used  the  word  **  Son  "  as  a 
conventional  term  but  that  He  used  the  word 
because  any  man  would  know  something  of 
what  it  meant  from  living  human  experience. 
But  judging  again  from  the  depth  to  which 
Jesus  drove  the  word  in  Christian  conscious- 
ness we  have  to  hold  that  back  of  the  use  of 
the  word  was  a  fact  of  experience,  or  rather 
more  likely  a  state  of  experience  which  gave 
the  word  vitality.  We  listen  with  all  patience 
and  respect  to  those  who  tell  us  that  when 
Jesus  spoke  of  Himself  as  the  "  Son  of  Man  " 
He  had  in  mind  merely  an  apocalyptic  scrip- 
ture and  that  when  He  called  Himself  the 
"  Son  of  God  "  He  meant  just  a  close  feeling 
of  connection  and  dependence  possible  to  any 
other  man, — but  the  effects  seem  greater 
than  such  speech  would  produce.  The  truth 
seems  to  be  that  Jesus'  strength  lay  in  a  con- 
sciousness of  personal  oneness  with  the  Father 
in  heaven  which  is  unique  with  all  the  unique- 
ness of  distinct  personal  experience  and  with 
the  enormous  historical  effects  that  flowed 
from  it,  and  that  Jesus  found  His  life  mission 
in  a  consciousness  of  oneness  with  men  which 
is  also  unique.  We  are  not  to  conceive  of 
the  person  of  Christ  as  a  thread  on  which  to 
string  abstract  "  divinity  "  and  abstract  "  hu- 


26  PERSONAL  CHRISTIANITY 

manity."  Many  theories  of  the  divinity  of 
Christ  suffer  grievously  from  impersonalism. 
Jesus  was  a  person  with  unique  personal  re- 
lationship to  God  and  man.  About  all  that 
we  can  say  of  that  relationship  in  its  inner 
aspect  is  that  the  experience  of  Jesus  was  as 
divine  as  possible  without  ceasing  to  be 
human  and  as  human  as  possible  without 
ceasing  to  be  divine. 

The  point  we  insist  upon  is  that  all  our 
debates  about  the  problem  of  Christ  must 
start  from  a  living  personal  experience.  A 
touch  of  philosophy — noble  philosophy  too — 
marks  the  opening  of  the  Fourth  Gospel  but 
the  philosophic  word  **  logos  "  is  not  as  near  life 
as  the  word  "Son"  of  which  that  Gospel  itself 
makes  so  much.  The  consideration  we  would 
repeatedly  urge  is  that  we  must  keep  upper- 
most in  all  the  discussion  of  the  Church  re- 
garding the  two  natures  and  the  two  wills 
and  the  interpenetration  of  the  divine  and  the 
human  a  personal  fact,  not  so  much  the  per- 
son of  Christ  as  the  person  Christ.  The  ab- 
stract terms  have  their  value  as  instruments 
to  help  us  seize  the  meaning  of  the  fact 
but  the  fact  is  itself  personal.  All  valuable 
Christological  discussion  must  be  begun, 
continued,  and  ended  with  Jesus  the  Person 
in  mind. 


THE  PERSONAL  IN  CHRISTIANITY      27 

Similarly  with  the  cross  of  Christ.  We 
have  so  long  debated  theories  of  atonement 
that  we  have  occasionally  come  dangerously 
near  missing  sight  of  the  truth  that  the  New 
Testament  accounts  are  personal.  We  may 
use  terms  like  substitutional,  and  govern- 
mental, and  moral  influence  wisely  if  we 
keep  in  mind  their  instrumental  nature. 
But  Gethsemane  and  Calvary  were  personal. 
The  impression  made  upon  the  followers  of 
Jesus  by  Gethsemane  and  Calvary  was  that 
Jesus  was  passing  through  a  supreme  mo- 
ment in  His  experience  and  that  at  that  mo- 
ment His  thought  moved  in  definitely  per- 
sonal channels.  The  mind  of  the  Redeemer 
did  not  seem  to  be  among  abstractions. 
There  is  no  suggestion  that  impersonal  ne- 
cessities of  any  sort  were  driving  the  Master 
on,  or  that  He  was  meeting  His  death  for 
the  sake  of  general  considerations.  There  is 
no  blind  fate  at  work, — if  the  impression  we 
get  from  the  Gospels  can  be  trusted.  The 
Master  is  submissive  to  a  personal  will, — 
that  of  the  Father.  If  it  be  possible  He 
would  have  the  cup  pass  from  Him,  but 
there  is  no  sort  of  hint  of  blind  necessity  at 
work.  The  realm  is  that  of  personal  rela- 
tions. And  part  of  the  marvel  of  the  Cross 
to  this  day  is  that  so  many  feel  that  the  suf- 


28  PERSONAL   CHRISTIANITY 

fering  of  Jesus  makes  a  personal  appeal  to 
them  as  persons.  Whatever  the  prime  sig- 
nificance of  Calvary,  it  is  not  a  struggle  with 
impersonal  necessities  or  even  with  abstract 
sin.  It  is,  so  far  as  Christ  is  concerned,  an 
inner  personal  experience  so  profound  as  to 
reveal  the  heart  of  the  Father  Himself ;  and 
so  far  as  men  are  concerned,  it  is  a  manifes- 
tation of  holy  love  so  compelling  as  to  touch 
right-minded  men  with  a  sense  of  personal 
appeal.  And  the  love  is  not  in  the  abstract. 
It  is  not  for  humanity  or  for  mankind  but  for 
men.  The  personal  aspect  of  the  Cross  is 
the  compelling  aspect. 

So  with  the  other  elements  of  the  Christi- 
anity of  Christ, — if  we  can  use  such  an  ex- 
pression, for  even  *'  Christianity "  is  imper- 
sonal enough  to  leave  us  a  little  detached 
from  the  Christ.  Take  the  resurrection  ap- 
pearances. It  is  no  part  of  our  present  pur- 
pose to  attempt  to  explain  the  nature  of  these 
appearances.  All  we  wish  to  say  is  that  they 
are  consistent  with  the  rest  of  the  Gospel  nar- 
rative in  that  they  are  definitely  personal.  If 
their  function  were  primarily  evidential  they 
should  have  been  more  general, — and  for 
such  purpose  they  ought  co  have  been  made 
before  some  persons  besides  the  disciples. 
Perhaps    they    have   more   evidential    value 


THE   PERSONAL   IN   CHRISTIANITY       29 

looked  at  as  manifestations  of  a  love  for  the 
disciples  which  not  even  passage  through 
death  could  vanquish,  but  that  is  not  evi- 
dence as  we  ordinarily  think  of  it  in  discuss- 
ing the  appearances.  In  any  case  the  narra- 
tive tells  of  an  appearance  to  Peter  evidently 
with  a  revelation  intended  primarily  for 
Peter, — to  Mary  and  the  disciples  with  per- 
sonal greeting.  Here  again  we  wave  off  the 
impatient  critic  who  would  have  us  stop  to 
examine  the  evidence  to  determine  whether 
there  were  any  such  appearances  or  not. 
With  the  matter-of-factness  of  the  narrative 
we  are  not  now  concerned.  We  are  asking 
simply  the  question  as  to  how  those  who 
stood  closest  to  Christ  thought  of  Him  and 
His  work.  If  the  appearance-narratives  are 
only  attempts  on  the  part  of  the  disciples  to 
explain  the  effect  of  the  life  of  the  Lord  on 
themselves  they  nevertheless  have  their  value 
for  our  immediate  point,  as  suggesting  that 
the  thought  of  those  closest  to  Christ  went 
instinctively  and  spontaneously  to  intimately 
personal  terms. 

This  brings  us  at  last  to  the  thought  of  the 
Spirit  of  Christ  as  at  work  in  the  heart  of 
His  followers.  From  the  time  of  the  ex- 
perience in  the  upper  room  at  Jerusalem  till 
to-day  it  has  been  maintained  by  the  followers 


30  PERSONAL  CHRISTIANITY 

of  Christ  that  the  contact  with  God  is  a  per- 
sonal contact,  that  the  chief  effect  of  prayer  is 
its  personal  effect,  that  the  result  of  accept- 
ance of  Christianity  is  to  make  persons  in  a 
sense  more  personal  than  before,  that  the 
chief  duties  of  the  Christian  are  to  persons, 
that  the  believers  are  a  body  not  merely 
figuratively  but  vitally,  since  they  are  bound 
together  by  experiences  which  are  pulsing 
with  an  inner  and  personal  energy.  In 
other  words  Christianity,  while  it  depends,  as 
we  shall  see  in  subsequent  lectures,  upon  the 
instrumental  for  much  of  its  power,  is  at  its 
centre  a  distinctly  personal  religion.  It  is 
not  even  to  be  called  Life  unless  the  life  is 
the  life  of  persons. 

An  experience  like  that  of  Pentecost  is  re- 
markable among  other  reasons  for  the  com- 
pletely personal  terms  in  which  those  present 
conceived  of  the  experience.  The  wor- 
shippers in  the  upper  room  believed  they 
had  come  into  actual  touch  with  the  living 
Master.  We  are  not  now  concerned  with 
the  correctness  of  the  interpretation  of  the 
experience ;  we  simply  point  out  the  fact 
that  the  early  believers  did  believe  in  this 
personal  fashion.  Their  idea  of  the  spiritual 
presence  of  Christ  was  so  definitely  personal 
as  to  make  a  beginning  for  that  doctrine  of 


THE   PERSONAL  IN   CHRISTIANITY       3 1 

the  Trinity  which  has  been  such  a  sore  puzzle 
to  the  theologians  ever  since.  The  early 
Christians  were  not  theologians, — they  stood 
at  the  very  fountainhead  of  direct  experience 
out  of  which  the  subsequent  theorizing  rose. 
They  interpreted  their  experiences  in  the 
readiest,  simplest  terms  which  came  to  them. 
Their  explanations  no  doubt  needed  the 
corrections  of  later  thought,  but  the  chief 
element  in  their  life  was  the  experience 
itself,  an  experience  so  quick  and  vivid  that 
they  could  think  of  it  only  in  personal  forms. 
They  would  not  call  the  Spirit  "it."  The 
Spirit  must  be  spoken  of  in  personal  terms. 
The  Jesus  who  had  been  their  earthly  Master 
was  the  Christ  of  God  still  living  and  touch- 
ing their  lives  with  direct  power. 

Now  what  was  the  result  of  all  this? 
Much  every  way,  but  for  our  present  purpose 
it  is  necessary  to  lay  stress  on  the  personal 
effects  on  the  believers.  A  characteristic  to 
be  noted  in  the  history  of  Christianity  is  that 
nothing  in  the  experience  of  the  early  Chris- 
tians tended  to  overslaugh  their  personal  life 
or  independence.  In  later  days  oriental  in- 
fluences did  seem  to  overcome  such  of  the 
believers  as  resorted  to  trances  and  ecstasies 
but  the  clear  insight  of  the  Fathers  always 
marked  these  experiences  as  heresies.     We 


32  PERSONAL   CHRISTIANITY 

sometimes  speak  of  heresy  as  if  it  were 
altogether  an  aberration  of  doctrine,  but, 
historically,  many  heresies  have  been  ab- 
normalities of  experience.  The  Eastern  con- 
ceptions which  would  have  the  worshipper 
reduce  himself  to  such  passivity  that  he 
seemed  swooning  into  nothingness  have 
never  been  Christian.  In  our  day  we  hear 
much  about  the  power  of  the  Hindu  to  give 
himself  up  to  days  of  absorbed  meditation, 
as  if  this  were  a  power  which  the  Christian 
believer  has  not  yet  attained.  Those  who 
have  most  acutely  observed  these  Hindu 
experiences,  however,  doubt  whether  they  are 
reflective  or  meditative  at  all.  Conversation 
with  the  Hindu  devotee  would  indicate  that 
neither  before  nor  after  his  experience  does 
the  Hindu  seem  to  have  much  intellectual 
content  on  which  to  meditate.  The  experi- 
ence is  a  sort  of  sinking  into  quiescence  with 
an  approach  just  as  near  the  obliteration  of 
the  personality  as  may  be.  At  times  this 
sort  of  dreaminess  has  tinged  mysticism  in 
Christian  circles,  but  it  is  not  Christian.  The 
thought  which  precedes  experience  conditions 
the  experience  just  as  the  experience  in  turn 
conditions  the  thought.  The  idea  of  the 
Hindu  concerning  God  is  that  of  a  vague 
almost   impersonal   allness  and  the  Hindu's 


THE   PERSONAL  IN   CHRISTIANITY       33 

experience  moves  correspondingly  towards 
attempt  to  drop  off  the  personal.  After 
years  of  such  experiences  the  Hindu  is,  at 
least  in  any  ordinary  understanding  of  terms, 
less  of  a  man  than  before.  The  experience 
of  the  early  Christian  believer  moved  in  a 
different  direction.  It  started  with  the 
thought  of  a  Personal  Being  and  searched 
for  living  contact  with  that  Person. 

A  devout  theologian,  attempting  to  explain 
the  facts  of  Christian  experience,  once  sug- 
gested that  something  of  a  clue  might  be 
found  to  the  explanation  of  the  mystery  in 
the  study  of  hypnotism.  In  the  hypnotic 
state  one  life,  without  ceasing  to  be  itself, 
comes  so  thoroughly  under  the  influence  of 
another  life  as  practically  for  the  time  being 
to  parallel  that  other  life.  So  the  Divine 
Life  works  through  a  human  life.  But  the 
flaw  in  this  argument  is  that  in  a  true  sense 
the  personal  life  of  a  man  in  the  hypnotic 
state  is  not  his  own.  The  power  of  self- 
direction  is  gone,  and  while  the  psychological 
mechanism  seems  to  be  running  in  full  force 
the  element  of  substantial  self-direction  is  re- 
duced to  a  minimum.  The  man  is  not  him- 
self. He  is  the  mechanism  for  another.  If 
we  were  to  attempt  to  hold  him  responsible 
for  any  deed   done  in  the  hypnotic  state  we 


34  PERSONAL  CHRISTIANITY 

would  be  at  once  met  with  the  plea  that  a 
man  in  the  hypnotic  state  is  not  himself. 

This  brings  us  to  the  broad  contrast  be- 
tween all  such  experiences  and  the  experi- 
ence of  the  early  Christians, — and  the  later 
ones  too  for  that  matter.  The  early  Chris- 
tians lived  in  a  day  when  extraordinary  ex- 
periences were  not  extraordinary  in  the  sense 
of  rare  or  uncommon.  Enough  of  Eastern 
influence  was  to  be  found  in  the  lands  in 
which  Christianity  first  wrought  to  make  the 
spectacle  of  persons  in  emotional  abnormality 
very  frequent.  The  Christian  experience  was 
one  which  made  the  most  of  the  man, — not 
the  least  of  him.  It  left  the  man  larger  after 
the  crisis  than  before.  It  added  to  his  power 
of  self-direction  rather  than  subtracted  from 
it.  The  heart  of  the  difference  appears  also 
in  the  Christian  practice  of  prayer.  The 
prayers  of  the  followers  of  Jesus  were 
articulate  expressions  of  need.  Prayer  was 
not  an  aimless  dreaming.  The  life  was  in- 
deed to  be  filled  with  the  spirit  of  prayer  ; 
and  the  disciples,  according  to  Paul,  were  to 
pray  without  ceasing,  but  the  core  of  prayer 
was  articulate  speech  expressing  a  need. 
The  formulas  of  the  scribes  and  the  incanta- 
tions of  the  Gentiles  were  alike  odious,  for 
the  reason  that  true  prayer  was  supposed  to 


THE   PERSONAL   IN   CHRISTIANITY       35 

be  addressed  to  a  living  person.  Assuming 
the  person  to  whom  prayer  was  addressed  to 
be  a  person  at  all,  mechanical  formularies 
and  magic  passwords  would  mean  nothing. 
But  the  attempt  on  the  part  of  the  Christian 
to  pray  implied  something  on  the  part  of  the 
petitioner.  It  implied  quickened  thought  and 
sincere  feeling  and  purposeful  willingness  to 
work  in  the  spirit  of  the  uttered  prayer.  All 
this  meant  the  aroused  expansion  of  the 
soul. 

There  is  nothing,  we  repeat,  in  Christian 
experience  as  put  before  us  in  the  New 
Testament  to  indicate  that  the  personal  life 
of  the  believer  is  in  any  way  repressed.  On 
the  contrary  the  personal  distinctions  remain 
marked.  It  requires  only  the  most  casual 
reading  of  the  New  Testament  to  discern 
this.  It  is  as  patent  to  the  ordinary  reader 
of  the  Scriptures  as  to  the  careful,  critical 
student.  All  questions  of  exact  authorship 
apart, — it  will  be  admitted  that  the  Synoptic 
Gospels  and  the  Fourth  Gospel  were  written 
by  Christian  believers.  We  do  not  recall 
that  any  one  has  been  hardy  enough  to  at- 
tempt to  establish  the  contrary.  Yet  the  dif- 
ference in  content  and  style  between  the 
Fourth  Gospel  and  the  others  furnishes  food 
for  debate  to  this  hour.     Even  in  the  Synop- 


36  PERSONAL   CHRISTIANITY 

tics,  while  it  is  clear  that  all  authors  worked 
on  material  more  or  less  common,  very  im- 
portant differences  in  point  of  view  appear. 
Then  there  is  a  broad  difference  between  the 
admittedly  Pauline  epistles  and  the  other 
parts  of  the  New  Testament.  In  the  sphere 
of  more  intimate  personal  views  we  have  the 
record  of  serious  divergence  of  opinion  be- 
tween Paul  and  Peter.  The  astonishing 
variety  of  the  New  Testament  literature  we 
should  not  expect  if  Christianity  were  not  in- 
tensely personal  in  aim,  working  to  preserve 
what  is  separate  and  individual  in  the  life  of 
each  believer.  Even  in  the  day  of  that  hard- 
and-fast  theory  of  Biblical  inspiration  which 
made  each  writer  virtually  a  mechanical 
amanuensis  of  the  Divine,  all  that  the  holders 
of  the  theory  meant  was  that  each  man  wrote 
down  what  came  to  him  from  the  divine 
spirit  without  attempt  to  add  to  or  take  from. 
Few  upholders  of  the  most  rigid  type  of  that 
doctrine  would  have  been  willing  to  declare 
that  the  separate  writers  did  not  write  each 
after  his  own  fashion.  According  to  Paul 
contact  with  the  same  Spirit  through  prayer 
led  to  greatly  diversified  results.  Each  man 
wrought  according  to  his  own  nature  and  in 
his  own  fashion.  Some  were  evangelists  and 
some   prophets   and   some  organizers.     But 


THE   PERSONAL   IN   CHRISTIANITY       37 

there  is  very  little  to  show  that  Paul  meant 
that  the  man  whose  nature  fitted  him  to  be  an 
evangelist  became  a  prophet,  or  that  the 
prophet  left  off  prophecy  for  church  manage- 
ment. 

What  then  do  the  Scripture  writers  mean 
when  they  speak  of  conversion,  and  a  change 
of  heart,  or  a  change  of  nature  ?  What  is  a 
man's  nature  ?  It  is  certainly  not  some 
mysterious  stuff  in  him.  It  can  only  be  the 
law  or  the  laws  according  to  which  he  acts. 
Or  if  law  suggests  a  regularity  which  is  lack- 
ing in  much  life  we  say  that  a  man's  nature 
is  the  way  he  acts  or  lives.  The  only  agent 
is  the  man  himself  living  and  acting  in  a  cer- 
tain fashion.  To  convert  the  man,  or  to 
change  his  heart  or  his  nature,  is  so  to  act 
upon  him  that  he  freely  lives  in  a  differ- 
ent way  or  according  to  a  different  law. 
This  is  what  the  Master  seems  to  have 
meant  when  He  said  that  men  must  turn  if 
they  are  to  come  into  the  kingdom  of  God. 
Men  are  off  the  track  and  must  get  back 
upon  the  track.  Some  must  turn  squarely 
around,  and  others  must  make,  maybe  a  less 
radical  change  in  direction,  but  a  change 
nevertheless.  This  problem  of  direction  is 
all-important.  The  lost  life  is  the  life  going 
in  the  wrong  direction,  or  acting  according 


38  PERSONAL  CHRISTIANITY 

to  the  wrong  law,  or  in  the  wrong  way. 
That  the  change  in  becoming  a  Christian  is 
so  great  that  the  man  acts  and  thinks  and 
feels  differently  from  before  is  witnessed  to 
by  innumerable  experiences.  In  the  face  of 
the  testimony  it  would  be  impossible  to  deny 
this,  even  if  there  were  the  slightest  desire 
to  do  so,  but  there  is  nothing  in  the  New 
Testament  to  indicate  that  even  in  the  most 
marked  conversion  we  are  not  dealing  with 
the  same  man  after  the  experience  as  before. 
His  very  face  may  change,  but  it  is  the  same 
face.  His  mind  thinks  different  thoughts  but 
it  is  the  same  mind, — thinking  with  the  same 
peculiarities  of  mental  procedure.  The  heart 
desires  a  new  life,  but  the  quality  of  feeling  is 
the  same.  The  will  does  differently  but 
works  after  the  same  fashion.  The  clearest 
exposition  of  conversion  is  from  Jesus  Him- 
self and  that  is  in  distincdy  vital  terms.  The 
most  spiritually  minded  of  the  Gospel  writers 
evidently  caught  the  Master's  thought  that 
the  process  of  coming  into  the  kingdom  of 
God  is  to  be  described  as  a  birth,  and  a  birth 
is  not  a  mechanical  process.  It  is  the  intro- 
duction of  that  which  is  already  to  a  degree 
alive  to  a  larger  world  of  life.  So  with  the 
soul.  With  the  proper  surrender  of  the  will, 
— and  surrender  here  means  the  free  assump- 


THE  PERSONAL  IN  CHRISTIANITY       39 

tion  by  the  will  of  a  law  of  higher  life, — the 
soul  comes  into  a  new  world.  But  just  as  the 
organic  peculiarities  which  make  the  body 
distinctive  are  present  before  its  coming  into 
the  world  so  the  peculiarities  which  make  the 
soul  distinctive  before  its  coming  into  the 
kingdom  of  God  are  present  after  entrance 
into  that  kingdom.  The  most  remarkable 
instance  of  conversion  recorded  in  the  New 
Testament  is  that  of  Saul  of  Tarsus.  Here 
if  anywhere  a  personal  life  would  seem  to 
have  been  overwhelmed  in  such  complete- 
ness as  to  make  the  man  utterly  different 
from  what  he  was  before.  But  great  as  was 
this  Damascus  road  experience  it  seems  to 
have  been  definitely  sanctioned  and  accepted 
by  the  will  of  Saul  himself,  and  then  to  have 
turned  the  activities  of  the  convert  into  dif- 
ferent channels.  Saul  was  still  Saul.  Fur- 
thermore he  could  not  if  he  had  tried 
have  cleared  himself  of  thinking  of  Chris- 
tianity in  terms  of  the  system  in  which 
he  had  been  brought  up.  He  was  the  most 
advanced  of  the  early  apostles  and  flung  him- 
self farthest  from  the  Judaism  in  which  he  had 
been  trained,  but  he  made  even  his  anti- 
Judaistic  arguments  in  Judaistic  terms. 

The  hearer  however  would  have  a  right  to 
feel  that  in  this  discussion  of  the  personal  in 


40  PERSONAL  CHRISTIANITY 

Christianity  we  had  left  something  unsaid  if 
we  were  to  stop  at  this  point.  For  after  all 
Christianity  does  believe  in  profound  inner 
change.  The  only  consideration  we  are  urg- 
ing is  that  this  change  does  not  wreck  per- 
sonal distinctiveness  but  that  it  makes  the 
personal  more  significant.  Jesus  said  that 
He  came  that  men  might  have  life  and  that 
they  might  have  it  more  abundantly.  He 
said  also  that  the  tree  is  to  be  known  by  its 
fruits.  The  implication  is  that  once  a  man 
has  become  a  Christian  he  yields  more  fruit 
and  better.  It  is  matter  for  congratulation 
that  we  live  in  a  day  when  Christianity  is 
being  judged  by  the  standard  by  which  it 
asks  to  be  judged,  and  the  standard  in  ac- 
cord with  which  it  claims  to  produce  its  re- 
sults. The  question  asked  to-day  of  all  sorts 
of  teaching  is  as  to  the  kind  of  man  produced 
by  the  teachings.  By  this  test  Christianity 
seeks  to  be  judged,  and  that  for  the  reason 
that  it  aims  at  making  men  in  the  divine  sense 
more  and  more  human.  Is  a  man  larger  or 
smaller  after  his  practice  of  Christianity  ? 
What  is  the  effect  of  prayer  on  the  man  who 
prays  ?  These  are  the  questions  by  which 
Christianity  is  willing  to  stand  or  fall.  The 
effect  on  the  man  most  intimately  practicing 
the  belief  is  the  effect  by  which  we  judge  the 


THE   PERSONAL  IN   CHRISTIANITY       4I 

belief.  The  Christian  should  be  perfectly- 
willing  not  only  to  meet  the  question  as  to 
what  there  is  in  Christianity  to  harm  any  one, 
but  also  the  further  question  as  to  what  there 
is  in  the  system  to  help  any  one.  Christianity 
must  not  harm  men  and  it  must  help  them. 
The  insistence  first  of  all  upon  moral  right- 
ness  and  after  that  upon  the  development  of 
the  life  to  the  largest  and  finest  possible, — this 
is  the  essential  mark  of  belief  in  Christ.  The 
presence  of  aberrations  here  and  there  does 
not  detract  from  the  truth  of  this  central 
claim  for  Christianity.  Some  of  the  persons 
who  compose  the  Christian  Church  run  off 
into  extremes  but  the  claim  of  the  Church  is 
that  the  contact  with  God  in  prayer  makes 
men  stronger  and  better.  The  test  of  prayer 
is  the  effect  on  the  man  who  prays.  The 
summary  logic  of  Christianity  is  that  beliefs 
which  make  men  true  and  great  must  be 
themselves  essentially  true  and  great. 

And  now  it  may  be  supposed  that  this 
lecture  is  teaching  that  Jesus  wrought  for  ex- 
treme individualism.  We  do  not  intend  to 
leave  any  such  impression.  The  teaching  of 
Jesus  stands  between  that  radical  doctrine 
of  the  individual  which  can  see  nothing  but 
separate  individuals  and  that  radical  doctrine 
of  society  which  would  overlook  and  ignore 


42  PERSONAL  CHRISTIANITY 

the  individuals.  The  teaching  of  Jesus  would 
take  account  both  of  the  separateness  of  the 
individual  and  of  the  partly  organic  nature  of 
society.  In  this  lecture  we  are  trying  to  keep 
close  to  the  prime  facts  with  which  society 
has  to  do.  When  we  use  the  word  personal 
we  do  not  mean  personal  as  over  against  so- 
cial, for  we  mean  that  the  social  is  personal. 
The  actual  situation  in  human  life  is  not  indi- 
viduals existing  separately  but  individuals 
existing  together.  The  idea  that  Christianity 
would  do  anything  to  put  individuals  off  in  a 
vacuum  is  utterly  mistaken.  No  rational 
being  ever  lived  an  altogether  separate  Hfe. 
Individuals  are  made  for  one  another,  and 
while  the  consciousness  of  the  individual  is 
very  distinct  and  separate,  while  there  is  in  a 
sense  a  wall  built  around  the  individual,  the 
further  fact  is  that  the  individuals  are  so  fitted 
together  that  in  the  full  measure  they  cannot 
live  apart.  The  social  activities  are  merely 
personal  activities  in  which  two  or  more,  in- 
stead of  one,  take  part. 

Jesus  saw  individuals  just  as  they  are. 
While  an  individual  is  from  one  angle  an 
entity  and  a  unity,  from  another  angle  he  is 
only  a  fraction.  Taken  by  himself  he  is  only 
the  centre  on  which  numberless  hooks  hang, — 
hooks  which  reach  out  to  hold  fast  other  indi- 


THE   PERSONAL   IN   CHRISTIANITY       43 

viduals.  Theoretically  speaking,  the  existence 
of  the  individual  self, — the  personal  centre, — 
is  about  the  most  important  fact  we  have. 
Practically,  the  individual  self  amounts  to 
very  little  if  we  have  not  other  selves  with 
whom  the  individual  can  come  into  touch. 
The  fact  of  the  personal  centre  answers  some 
questions  which  the  abstract  thinkers  have 
been  debating  from  the  days  of  the  Greeks. 
Here  we  have  the  substance  which  both 
changes  and  abides,  and  thus  answers  the 
puzzle  as  to  how  in  one  being  there  can 
be  fixity  and  change.  Practically,  the  per- 
sonal centre  is  a  centre  of  just  nothing  at  all 
if  there  is  no  possibility  of  reaching  out  to 
others.  It  is  in  contact  with  those  others 
that  the  self  comes  to  itself.  So  for  example 
Jesus  took  the  family  for  granted  as  a  spir- 
itual fact.  When  He  spoke  of  marriage  as 
an  institution  He  was  thinking  only  of  the 
man-made  laws  with  which  men  express 
certain  ideas  concerning  the  married  state. 
When  He  said  that  in  heaven  there  is  neither 
marrying  nor  giving  in  marriage  we  would 
have  to  make  Him  mean  something  contrary 
to  His  whole  system  if  we  made  Him  mean 
that  the  spiritual  relationships  which  grow  up 
in  the  family  are  not  essential  and  permanent. 
It  must  not  be  forgotten  that  in  the  present 


44  PERSONAL   CHRISTIANITY 

lecture  we  are  trying  to  keep  close  to  the 
spiritual  and  personal  bases  of  the  Christian 
life.  The  artificial  and  instrumental  elements 
we  shall  appraise  later.  We  cannot  call  any- 
thing instrumental  in  our  present  use  of  the 
word  which  goes  so  deeply  towards  the  very 
centre  of  the  personal  life  as  does  the  rela- 
tionship in  the  family.  The  child  could  not 
come  to  full  personal  existence  if  the  older 
person  did  not  stand  to  him  in  the  place  of  a 
parent.  It  is  said  that  in  India  for  the  pur- 
poses of  experiment  a  number  of  newly-born 
children  were  once  put  together  and  kept  to- 
gether under  the  charge  of  nurses  through 
years  of  childhood, — the  nurses  under  pain  of 
death  not  being  allowed  to  utter  a  spoken 
word.  The  children  came  to  nothing.  It  is 
hardly  to  be  supposed  that  they  were  natu- 
rally idiots,  but  after  a  few  years  their  condi- 
tion was  practically  that  of  idiocy.  Now  this 
does  not  point  merely  to  the  importance  of 
language  as  an  instrumental  institution.  It 
points  to  the  dwarfing  of  the  soul  when  it 
cannot  hook  itself  to  some  life  other  than 
itself.  The  parents  and  the  children  need 
the  merging  of  souls  for  the  sake  of  recipro- 
cal personal  development.  So  with  the  hus- 
bands and  wives  and  the  brothers  and  sisters. 
Jesus  saw  this  so  closely  that  He  utilized  these 


THE   PERSONAL   IN   CHRISTIANITY       45 

inner  spiritual  relationships,  not  the  artificial 
and  institutional  phases  of  the  family  life,  to 
set  forth  man's  relation  to  God.  The  man 
does  not  come  to  full  spiritual  stature  without 
the  communion  with  the  Father  above  and 
best  reaches  this  communion  in  discharge  of 
duties  to  the  persons  in  the  world. 

It  is  from  this  point  of  view  that  we  must 
approach  the  study  of  the  Church.  With 
the  instrumental  aspect  of  the  Church  we 
shall  deal  in  the  next  lecture.  Here  we  point 
out  that  the  life  of  Jesus  and  the  experiences 
which  came  to  His  followers  in  the  early 
days  were  calculated  to  deepen  the  founda- 
tion on  which  the  institutional  side  of  the 
Church  was  built  up, — the  dependence  of 
men  upon  one  another  in  spiritual  relation- 
ships. Paul  stood  closest  to  the  Master's 
thought  when  he  spoke  of  the  Church  as  the 
body  of  Christ.  It  is  hard  to  think  that  he 
intended  by  the  phrase  just  to  capture  the 
attention  of  his  readers  by  a  happy  figure  of 
speech.  Granting  the  validity  of  that  con- 
ception of  the  divine  nearness  which  is  so 
much  a  part  of  our  thinking  to-day,  Paul's 
speech  suggests  the  closeness  of  the  spirit  of 
Christ  to  a  body  of  believers  in  sympathy 
with  the  divine  purpose, — a  closeness  as 
immediate  as  the  closeness  of  a  man  to  the 


46  PERSONAL   CHRISTIANITY 

responsive  nerves  and  muscles  of  his  own 
body.  But  there  is  another  aspect, — that 
which  Paul  so  strongly  emphasized,  the 
significance  of  the  activity  of  each  part  of 
the  body  for  every  other  part.  We  cannot 
indeed  speak  of  a  society  as  an  organism 
with  the  same  exactness  with  which  we  speak 
of  a  human  body  as  an  organism,  but  the 
expression  is  at  least  on  the  path  to  the 
truth.  The  simplest  psychological  experi- 
ment shows  that  as  minds  work  together  in 
a  common  purpose  the  powers  of  each  are 
increased  in  defiance  of  the  ordinary  laws  of 
arithmetic.  One  hundred  plus  one  hundred 
no  longer  make  two  hundred,  but  the  addi- 
tion makes  five  hundred  or  a  thousand. 
There  is  a  social  reenforcement  which  defies 
the  familiar  methods  of  estimate.  And  there 
is  more, — there  is  often  the  loosing  of  a 
force  in  the  individual  which  the  individual 
himself  did  not  suspect  that  he  had.  We 
observe  this  on  the  bad  side  when  we  see  a 
mob  spirit  so  strong  that  men  who  would  not 
as  individuals  have  thought  of  evil  deeds, 
under  the  influence  of  the  mob  spirit  run 
headlong  to  courses  which  in  quieter  mo- 
ments they  condemn.  They  wonder  after- 
wards if  they  could  have  been  themselves  in 
the  mob.     In  a  sense  they  were  not  them- 


THE   PERSONAL   IN   CHRISTIANITY       47 

selves, — a  different  phase  of  the  activity  of 
the  self  was  started  into  action  by  the  pres- 
ence of  the  crowd.  Now  these  laws  which 
work  so  clearly  in  crises  of  evil  point  to 
possibilities  for  crises  of  good.  We  do  not 
surrender  anything  of  what  we  said  about 
Christianity  as  not  overwhelming  the  indi- 
vidual when  we  do  say  that  in  righteous 
community-action  there  are  possibilities  of 
which  the  individual  might  not  ever  be 
conscious  if  left  to  himself.  The  memory  of 
moments  of  exalted  uplift  which  have  oc- 
curred as  a  righteous  enthusiasm  has  taken 
hold  of  men  in  masses  remains  in  the  indi- 
vidual mind  to  help  that  mind  towards 
larger  personal  strength,  just  as  truly  as  the 
memory  of  deeds  done  under  the  influence 
of  evil  social  forces  tends  to  degrade  and 
dwarf  the  mind  as  it  looks  back  upon  them. 
The  early  Christians  seem  to  have  partaken 
of  this  spirit  of  community.  The  fact  that 
they  had  all  things  in  common  does  not  have 
as  much  economic  significance  for  our  times 
as  some  radical  reformers  would  have  us 
believe,  but  it  certainly  has  profound  spiritual 
significance.  It  is  the  translation  into 
material  terms  of  a  feeling  of  community  so 
close  that  at  least  for  a  time  material  com- 
munism was  possible. 


48  PERSONAL   CHRISTIANITY 

This  then  is  what  we  mean  by  the  personal 
in  Christianity, — not  the  individual  alone  but 
persons  set  in  relations  to  one  another,  which 
relations  are  as  much  a  fact  as  is  the  separate 
existence  of  the  individuals.  We  do  not 
subscribe  to  a  doctrine  of  individualism 
which  would  attempt  to  pull  the  individual 
out  of  his  living  relations  and  look  at  him 
apart.  This  is  not  possible, — any  more  than 
it  would  be  possible  to  cut  off  a  living  arm 
and  expect  to  study  it  as  still  living.  Nor 
do  we  subscribe  to  a  doctrine  of  society  as 
a  thing-in-itself  which  would  blur  over  the 
individuals.  We  look  upon  persons  as 
realizing  themselves  in  a  Christian  com- 
munity. This  is  the  fundamental.  In  a 
sense  even  these  persons  are  instrumental  to 
one  another,  but  that  is  a  forcing  of  the  word 
out  of  the  meaning  which  we  now  have  in 
mind.  The  persons  could  more  properly  be 
called  parts  of  one  another,  or  organs  of  one 
another.  The  great  aim  of  Christianity  is  to 
minister  to  the  needs  of  these  persons  thus 
set  together.  Through  all  the  ages  the  be- 
lievers have  taught  that  those  who  live  in 
this  substantial  community  of  like  spiritual 
aims  are  the  Church  of  Christ, — part  of  it 
visible  and  part  invisible.  Through  the 
spiritual  union  the  society  life  becomes  richer 


THE  PERSONAL  IN   CHRISTIANITY       49 

and  through  the  enrichment  of  the  commu- 
nity fuller  life  comes  to  the  individuals  of  the 
community. 

It  is  the  aim  of  the  Church  to  bring  all 
men  into  this  substantial  fellowship,  not 
merely  into  the  instrumental  organizations 
which  we  call  the  separate  churches.  This 
fellowship  is  the  kingdom  of  God  on  earth 
which  all  right-minded  men  are  supposed  to 
try  to  advance.  Now  it  is  the  purpose  of 
this  series  of  lectures  to  try  to  show  that  this 
personal  community  is  entided  to  use  what- 
ever instruments  can  be  employed  to  further 
its  fundamental  human  purpose.  That  pur- 
pose of  bringing  life  to  persons  being  kept  in 
mind,  the  Christian  community  has  a  right  to 
deal  with  the  merely  instrumental  in  any  such 
fashion  as  will  increase  the  life.  The  great 
heresy  then  becomes  the  heresy  of  treating 
lives  as  if  they  were  in  the  mechanical  sense 
instruments  and  of  treating  instruments  as  if 
they  were  ends  in  themselves.  The  human 
outcome  must  be  kept  uppermost. 

We  know  that  human  societies  are  allowed 
to  take  considerable  liberties  if  they  do  so  in 
the  name  of  human  welfare.  If  the  aim  is 
simply  to  build  up  a  state  as  a  state  some 
actions  are  forthwith  condemned  which  are 
entirely  legitimate  when   undertaken  in  the 


50  PERSONAL  CHRISTIANITY 

name  of  the  largest  human  Hfe.  To  take  an 
extreme  example,  a  state  may  no  longer 
legitimately  go  to  war  if  its  aim  is  merely  to 
extend  its  own  boundaries  as  a  state.  We 
recognize  that  wars  are  no  longer  morally 
justifiable  if  undertaken  just  for  national  ag- 
grandizement without  reference  to  human 
rights.  But  he  would  be  hardy  extremist 
who  would  deny  the  right  of  nations  of  the 
earth,  preferably  acting  together,  to  move  in 
upon  a  nation  which  in  its  internecine  strug- 
gles had  lost  all  sense  of  the  value  of  human 
life.  In  a  sense  the  kingdom  of  God  on  earth 
has  the  right  to  hold  to  some  beliefs  and  to  cast 
others  aside  and  to  make  practical  adjust- 
ments and  readjustments  if  it  does  so  in  the 
name  and  for  the  sake  of  the  largest  and  best 
religious  life. 

Coming  back  to  the  expression  of  Paul,  the 
body  of  Christ, — we  may  say  that  the  body 
has  a  right  to  use  some  instruments  which 
are  clearly  mechanical.  It  has  a  right  to 
fashion  for  itself  weapons  of  offense  and 
defense,  to  make  building  tools,  or  to  make  a 
house,  so  to  speak,  in  which  it  may  live.  It 
has  the  right  to  change  these  instruments  to 
make  them  better  ;  or,  if  they  have  served 
their  purpose,  to  cast  them  aside  for  some- 
thing better.     Instruments  are  to  be  judged 


THE  PERSONAL   IN   CHRISTIANITY       5 1 

only  by  what  they  can  do, — but  they  must 
not  be  taken  as  ends  in  themselves.  In  some 
cases  we  can  see  this  clearly.  There  is  no 
more  sin  in  changing  an  item  of  church  or- 
ganization, for  example,  for  something  better 
than  in  throwing  aside  a  poorly  tempered 
knife  for  one  better  tempered.  Thus  stated 
the  principle  seems  obvious  enough,  but  it 
may  lead  us  rather  far.  But  it  cannot  lead  us 
away  from  the  truth.  Truth  after  all  is  life  at 
its  fullest  and  best.  We  use  whatever  instru- 
ments serve  the  purpose  of  such  life. 

But  the  word  instrument  is  too  mechanical 
to  express  some  elements  which  after  all  are 
instrumental,  though  in  a  finer  sense.  Food 
for  example  is  instrumental,  and  men  live 
upon  intellectual  and  spiritual  foods  as  well 
as  upon  bread.  Man  does  not  live  by  bread 
alone.  But  the  spiritual  foods  are  to  be 
judged  by  the  kind  of  spiritual  vitality  they 
furnish.  Any  man  must  have  a  care  in  rec- 
ommending that  masses  of  men  change 
their  food,  but  after  all  no  suggestion  is  too 
radical  if  it  provides  for  larger  and  fuller 
satisfaction  of  the  life  needs.  When  a  phys- 
iologist who  advocated  the  change  for  the 
oriental  world  from  a  rice  to  a  wheat  diet  was 
met  by  the  rejoinder  that  it  is  wild  to  sug- 
gest a  change  in  a  food  on  which  a  race  has 


52  PERSONAL  CHRISTIANITY 

lived  for  ages,  his  retort  was  that  it  is  not 
wild  if  that  diet  is  the  reason  why  the  race 
has  amounted  to  so  little.  Apart  from  the 
dietetic  merits  of  the  case  the  physiologist 
had  the  correct  principle.  The  needs  of  the 
race  have  the  right  of  way. 

There  are  some  other  elements  which  are 
like  the  atmosphere  in  which  the  body  moves. 
These  elements  seem  to  be  fine  in  them- 
selves and  to  stand  in  their  own  right.  In 
reality  they  have  a  right  to  existence  only  so 
long  as  they  minister  to  a  need.  Works  of 
art  seem  to  stand  in  their  own  right.  But 
they  have  no  right  except  as  they  satisfy 
some  artistic  instinct.  We  have  seen  stand- 
ards of  art  change.  The  art  ministers  to  a 
finer  need  than  a  merely  utilitarian  tool  to  be 
sure,  but  it  ministers  nevertheless  and  stands 
or  falls  by  its  ministry. 

We  repeat  that  it  is  the  purpose  of  these 
lectures  to  insist  upon  this  distinction  between 
the  persons,  who  are  ends  in  themselves,  and 
the  instruments  which  minister  to  the  per- 
sons. We  object  to  treating  the  personal  as 
instrumental,  or  the  instrumental  as  if  it  had 
personal  rights.  We  do  not  pretend  to  say 
just  what  use  in  a  particular  case  the  Chris- 
tian community  is  to  make  of  a  given  instru- 
ment but  we  do  insist  that  the  highest  and 


THE   PERSONAL   IN   CHRISTIANITY       53 

best  life  of  persons  is  to  be  the  aim  of  all 
handling  of  instruments.  The  insistence 
upon  this  fullness  of  personal  life  will  help  us 
find  our  way  about  in  some  fields  not  tech- 
nically religious  but  which  can  be  utilized  for 
a  religious  purpose.  Much  of  our  confusion 
comes  from  our  taking  ecclesiastical  factors 
and  philosophic  and  moral  and  social  doc- 
trines as  if  they  were  ends  in  themselves. 
The  Christian  persons  are  the  ends  in  them- 
selves. The  sacredness  inheres  in  them.  The 
Christians  are  so  to  use  everything  instru- 
mental as  to  make  the  personal  more  sacred. 


LECTURE  II 

THE  INSTRUMENTAL 
IN  CHRISTIANITY 


LECTURE  II 

THE  INSTRUMENTAL  IN 
CHRISTIANITY 

WE  have  laid  stress  on  the  personal 
as  the  object  in  Christianity's  en- 
deavour. What  our  religion  aims 
at  is  the  unfolding  and  enrichment  of  the  life 
of  human  beings.  The  needs  of  persons  are 
uppermost  in  value  and  have  the  right  of 
way.  All  else  is  instrumental.  This  does 
not  in  the  least  minimize  the  importance  of 
the  instrumental :  indeed  it  makes  the  instru- 
mental indispensable  as  furnishing  the  means 
by  which  persons  attain  to  larger  life.  But 
discrimination  between  the  personal  and  the 
instrumental  gives  us  a  guide  and  a  standard. 
If  our  intent  is  to  treat  certain  devices  of  the 
Christian  system  as  ends  in  themselves  our 
attitude  and  conduct  will  be  different  from 
what  it  will  be  if  these  factors  have  instru- 
mental place.  Some  instrumental  elements 
are  indeed  means  of  grace.  But  the  means 
of  grace  are  not  the  ends  of  grace.  An  end 
57 


58  PERSONAL  CHRISTIANITY 

of  grace  cannot  be  an  instrument  but  must 
be  a  person. 

Foremost  among  these  means  of  grace  we 
place  the  Christian  Scriptures.  We  all  admit 
theoretically  to-day  that  our  Scriptures  belong 
in  the  instrumental  relationship,  but  very 
often  we  treat  the  Book  as  an  end  in  itself. 
Now  of  course  there  has  been  sensibleness 
and  wisdom  in  some  defense  of  the  Scrip- 
tures which  has  pronounced  them  ends  in 
themselves.  In  times  past  this  position  helped 
in  the  preservation  of  the  Scriptures.  If  some 
believers  had  not  looked  upon  the  Book  as 
possessing  a  peculiar  sacredness  in  itself  it 
might  never  have  travelled  down  to  us.  But 
even  such  valiant  defenders  if  closely  cross- 
examined  would  have  placed  the  sacredness 
of  the  Book  in  what  it  can  do  for  men. 
Strictly  speaking  the  Book  is  instrumental. 
If  a  community's  last  available  food  supply 
in  time  of  famine  could  be  preserved  only  by 
some  one's  giving  his  life,  many  men  would 
offer  to  die.  But  this  would  not  be  because 
the  heroes  would  think  of  the  food.  They 
would  think  of  the  lives  that  the  food  would 
be  instrumental  in  saving. 

At  the  outset  we  protest  again  that  we  do 
not  mean  by  instrumental  anything  me- 
chanical.    The   Book  is  indeed  a  sword  of 


THE   INSTRUMENTAL   IN   CHRISTIANITY    59 

offense  and  defense,  but  it  is  instrumental 
also  in  those  finer  shades  of  meaning  at 
which  we  hinted  in  the  last  chapter.  It  is 
the  food  upon  which  men  sustain  themselves 
in  the  search  for  God.  It  is  the  clear  atmos- 
phere which  men  breathe  as  they  strive  after 
the  kingdom  of  righteousness.  It  abounds 
with  ideas  which  seem  to  stand  in  their  own 
right  as  good  and  true  and  beautiful  but 
which  after  all  have  their  deepest  claim  in 
that  they  minister  to  human  wants.  Take 
for  example  that  idea  of  God  with  which  we 
find  ourselves  as  the  result  of  Biblical  study. 
This,  we  say,  is  fine  in  itself.  Apart  from 
any  utilitarian  query  as  to  the  effect  on  us 
of  accepting  this  idea  the  idea  stands  by 
itself  as  a  final  conception, — one  which  we 
contemplate  for  itself,  as  we  would  contem- 
plate a  masterpiece  in  painting  or  in 
sculpture.  But  even  such  masterpieces  are 
instrumental  as  we  use  the  term.  They 
minister  to  a  human  demand  even  if  the 
demand  is  satisfied  not  so  much  by  practical 
utilization  as  by  adoring  contemplation.  We 
must  keep  steadily  before  us  that  we  are 
viewing  the  life  of  man  in  its  highest  ranges 
and  are  asking  what  will  best  suit  the  highest 
needs.  The  purpose  of  the  readers  of  the 
Scriptures    has    been    from    the    beginning 


6o  PERSONAL  CHRISTIANITY 

loftily  practical, — they  have  used  the  Book 
as  a  means  of  grace.  This  being  true  it 
seems  a  legitimate  inquiry  on  the  part  of 
Christians  as  to  how  to  make  the  Scriptures 
more  completely  and  specifically  means  of 
grace.  We  are  not  doing  honour  to  a  sacred 
idol  before  which  we  must  bow  down,  but 
rather  awarding  proper  place  to  a  weapon,  a 
food,  an  atmosphere.  On  the  plea  for  in- 
crease of  usefulness  we  may  so  deal  with 
weapons  and  foods  and  atmospheres  as  to 
make  the  most  out  of  them.  It  is  not  unfair 
to  affirm  that  down  to  the  present  not  enough 
has  been  made  of  the  Scriptures.  They 
have  not  been  used  with  the  wisest  economy. 
If  we  regard  them  as  a  field  we  must  admit 
that  they  have  not  been  intensively  cultivated. 
For  proof  of  this  we  have  only  to  inquire  as 
to  how  many  devout  Bible  followers  habitu- 
ally read  widely  throughout  the  Book.  Al- 
most every  mature  Bible  reader  to-day  has 
been  brought  up  on  the  doctrine  of  the 
sacredness  of  the  entire  Book,  but  not  all 
readers  carry  that  doctrine  into  practice. 
The  reading  actually  moves  through  some 
of  the  loftier  eloquence  of  the  prophets, 
tarries  delightedly  around  the  favourite 
psalms,  pores  long  over  the  Gospels,  and 
catches   the    glow  of  some   of   the  epistles. 


THE   INSTRUMENTAL   IN   CHRISTIANITY    6l 

But  long  stretches  of  Scripture  territory  have 
been  neglected.  There  are  abandoned  farms 
in  the  Scripture.  It  ought  to  be  worth  while 
to  see  if  some  use  cannot  be  found  for  these 
Scriptural  acres.  If  we  believe  that  the  Book 
as  a  whole  contains  a  revelation  from  God 
why  confine  ourselves  to  a  few  passages,  im- 
portant as  these  may  be  ?  If  the  Scripture 
is  indeed  the  daily  bread  upon  which  the 
believer  lives  why  forget  that  the  preparation 
of  bread  so  as  to  win  from  it  the  most  nutri- 
ment is  one  of  the  chief  functions  of  the 
housewife  ?  The  Bible  was  made  for  man 
and  not  man  for  the  Bible.  The  Bible  then 
should  be  so  used  as  to  make  it  mean  the 
most  for  man. 

It  is  a  mistake  to  suppose  that  modern 
Biblical  study  has  on  the  whole  or  in  the 
main  pared  down  the  useful  portions  of  the 
Scriptures  or  thrown  away  parts  of  the 
Scriptures.  A  few  years  ago  it  was  a  favour- 
ite procedure  with  some  opponents  of  the 
more  recent  methods  of  approaching  the 
Bible  to  refer  to  modern  students  as  the 
mutilators  of  the  Scriptures.  But  this  misses 
the  point.  Dismissing  the  extremists  here 
and  there  whose  assumptions  and  conclu- 
sions are  clearly  fanciful  or  forced,  the  intent 
of  present-day  study  is  to  get  the  most  out  of 


62  PERSONAL  CHRISTIANITY 

the  Scriptures.  We  do  not  get  the  most 
from  the  Scriptures  by  using  them  without 
discrimination,  any  more  than  we  get  the 
most  from  any  other  instrument  by  treating 
it  thus.  Employing  the  old  figure  of  the 
kernel  and  the  husk, — economy  in  the  han- 
dling of  grain  does  not  show  itself  in  a  willing- 
ness to  eat  husk  and  all.  There  is  a  more 
excellent  way.  To  begin  with  we  must  re- 
member in  our  radical  impatience  with  husks 
that  there  could  not  have  been  grain  if  there 
had  not  been  husks,  and  next  that  even  after 
the  grain  is  threshed  from  the  husk  there  is  a 
market  value  for  husks  in  the  economy  of 
the  prudent  farmer.  We  can  use  the  Scrip- 
tures wisely  only  by  estimating  the  present 
usefulness  of  their  contents  in  the  light  of  the 
demands  of  the  highest  Christian  life  of  our 
time.  To  do  this  we  must  find  what  a  par- 
ticular Biblical  passage  meant  for  the  people 
to  whom  it  was  written,  and  then  discover 
what  message  it  has  for  to-day.  The  pres- 
ent-day Biblical  schools  are  not  throwing 
away  anything.  They  are  distinguishing  be- 
tween orders  of  utility.  Some  parts  of  the 
Scripture  contain  the  very  sum  of  practical 
wisdom  for  our  guidance  to-day.  They  set 
before  us  the  principles  which  must  be  prac- 
ticed into  life  if  we  would  know  that  doctrine 


THE   INSTRUMENTAL   IN   CHRISTIANITY    63 

of  Jesus  which  is  centrally  Christian.  There 
are  other  parts,  which  so  far  as  daily  guid- 
ance is  concerned,  may  have  little  bearing  on 
the  immediate  duties  before  us.  But  these 
parts  are  mightily  instructive  for  the  under- 
standing of  the  ways  of  God  with  men. 
More  than  all  this  there  is  a  fresh  air  of  life 
itself  blowing  across  even  what  we  might 
think  of  as  the  desert  passages  of  the  Bible. 
The  discerning  student  sees  that  various  pas- 
sages of  the  Scripture  do  not  cease  to  have 
all  use  when  they  lose  an  immediate  matter-of- 
fact  use.  The  value  for  reflection  and  for 
contemplation  still  abides. 

Modern  understanding,  then,  finds  more 
value  in  the  Scriptures  to-day  than  before, — 
only  the  worth  of  some  parts  is  of  a  different 
order  than  formerly.  Jesus  Himself  told  us 
that  He  would  set  aside  some  requirements 
of  the  Mosaic  law.  But  is  the  Mosaic  law 
then  of  no  value  ?  It  is  of  eternal  value  as 
showing  how  God  dealt  with  men.  We  often 
declare  that  the  Old  Testament  Scriptures 
were  written  in  a  time  so  different  from  ours 
that  they  have  but  little  concern  for  us.  We 
holders  of  this  view  might  get  some  light 
from  the  fact  that  many  Old  Testament 
specialists  to-day  are  among  the  most  devout 
of  men,  and  that  these  scholars  urge  the  study 


64  PERSONAL  CHRISTIANITY 

of  the  Old  Testament  for  devotional  purposes. 
The  divine  method  is  apparent  enough  in  the 
Old  Testament.  As  to  the  local  and  tempo- 
rary and  even  heathen  coverings  which  form 
the  husk  in  which  much  Scriptural  truth  is 
clothed,  is  it  important  to  know  which  is 
kernel  and  which  is  husk  so  that  we  may 
throw  the  husk  away  ?  Not  at  all.  Rather 
so  that  we  may  use  both  kernel  and  husk 
aright. 

We  emphasize  and  reemphasize  the  dif- 
ference in  orders  of  usefulness.  There  is  the 
usefulness  for  which  the  man  seeks  who 
wishes  immediate  light  or  consolation.  This 
man  may  not  get  much  from  the  Old  Testa- 
ment historical  narratives  or  even  from  some 
of  the  epistles.  But  another  man  is  not  thus 
under  the  pressure  of  crisis.  He  has  oppor- 
tunity to  brood  over  the  Book.  He  is  con- 
cerned not  merely  with  immediate  guidance 
but  also  with  the  larger  and  longer  views  of 
God's  dealings  with  men.  He  searches  the 
pages  of  all  commentators.  He  asks  as  to 
the  times  when  such  and  such  a  conception 
emerged,  who  was  the  prophet  to  whom  it 
was  first  revealed,  what  was  the  motive 
which  brought  it  forth,  what  in  the  concep- 
tion is  common  to  the  conceptions  of  the 
peoples    round    about    the    chosen    people. 


THE   INSTRUMENTAL   IN   CHRISTIANITY    65 

This  student  may  reach  conclusions  which 
to  his  ecclesiastical  neighbours  seem  very 
astounding  but  which  nevertheless  vitally 
minister  to  his  religious  cravings.  For  this 
man  too  is  on  the  search  for  God,  and  one 
road  to  God  is  by  study  of  God's  methods. 
If  a  man's  ways  are  significant  as  revealing 
the  nature  of  the  man,  why  should  God's 
ways  be  any  less  significant  as  revealing  the 
nature  of  God  ?  A  single  passage  may  not 
itself  be  illuminating  as  to  the  nature  of  God, 
but  the  entire  history  of  the  passage,  as  the 
modern  student  sees  it,  may  be  more  illu- 
minating than  any  direct  statement  of  divine 
purpose  could  be.  And  this  is  the  more  im- 
portant because  there  comes  with  such  study 
not  only  intellectual  enlightenment  but  that 
development  of  the  religious  instinct  which 
marks  the  devout  Christian  student.  Find- 
ing God  has  one  meaning  to  a  man  dis- 
tressed by  sin  or  burdened  by  sorrow,  but  a 
different  and  possibly  a  higher  significance 
to  the  man  who  is  seeking  knowledge  of 
God  for  the  sake  of  understanding  Him  in 
the  subtler,  finer  manifestations  and  for  the 
sake  of  bringing  those  revelations  to  men. 
A  sneer  used  to  go  the  rounds  to  the  effect 
that  the  scholarly  Biblical  student  is  likely  to 
be  a  woodenly  intellectual  creature  with  no 


66  PERSONAL  CHRISTIANITY 

conspicuous  development  of  religious  intui- 
tion. The  observation  of  the  present  speaker 
does  not  profess  to  be  extensive,  but  those 
who  know  best  the  foremost  Scripture  stu- 
dents of  our  time  report  that  the  impression 
left  from  contact  with  such  men  has  been  not 
more  of  intellectual  than  of  spiritual  acumen. 
From  acquaintance  with  such  men  there  may 
easily  come  a  confidence  in  the  efBcacy  of 
close  study  of  even  the  supposedly  driest 
parts  of  the  Old  Testament  as  a  means  of 
grace.  If  the  Bible  is  the  sword  of  the 
Spirit  we  should  know  how  to  take  hold 
of  it :  much  depends  on  handhng  a  sword 
aright.  If  the  Bible  is  food  the  more  we 
know  about  it  the  better.  If  it  is  atmos- 
phere the  more  pressing  the  duty  of  learning 
to  breathe  deeply. 

The  current  investigations  of  the  Scripture 
result  in  giving  the  Scripture  larger  utility. 
Even  in  the  parts  where  we  follow  the  motto 
of  knowledge  for  its  own  sake  we  are  seeking 
for  that  high  utility  which  ministers  to  and 
satisfies  the  mind  in  the  search  for  God.  So 
that  the  Church  has  a  right  to  look  upon  the 
Bible  from  the  point  of  view  of  each  succeed- 
ing day,  for  the  sake  of  the  welfare  of  the 
persons  of  each  succeeding  day.  It  was  not 
a  sin  to  translate  the  Scriptures  into  common 


THE   INSTRUMENTAL   IN   CHRISTIANITY    67 

tongues.  It  was  not  a  sin  to  allow  the  print- 
ing press  to  aid  in  the  spread  of  the  Gospel. 
It  is  not  a  sin  to  take  the  intellectual  instru- 
ments of  our  time  and  with  them  to  make  the 
Bible  count  for  more.  There  can  be  little 
doubt  that  the  scientifically  forged  tools  for 
Biblical  study  will  prove  in  the  end  to  be 
among  the  most  powerful  propagating 
agencies  in  the  spread  of  Scriptural  knowl- 
edge. Some  parts  of  the  Book  are  read  in- 
telligently to-day  that  were  hardly  read  at  all 
twenty-five  years  ago.  Some  classes  of  per- 
sons to-day  devotedly  study  the  Scriptures 
who  could  hardly  have  been  brought  to  look 
at  them  on  the  assumptions  of  twenty-five 
years  ago.  The  wider  the  use  of  the  Scrip- 
tures the  more  useful  they  are,  of  course. 
Nothing  will  be  thrown  out  of  the  Scriptures 
by  modern  study.  The  emphasis  will  be 
changed.  If  we  have  in  the  Bible  the 
best  spiritual  instrument  the  obligation  is 
upon  us  to  learn  how  best  to  use  the  instru- 
ment. 

This  was  the  plan  of  Jesus.  He  dared  set 
.side  some  of  the  teaching  of  the  Scripture 
iDecause  it  could  not  be  brought  into  living 
contact  with  the  moral  situation  in  which  He 
found  Himself.  But  He  set  aside  only  in 
that  He  changed  the  emphasis.     He  did  not 


68  PERSONAL   CHRISTIANITY 

cast  anything  out  of  the  Book.  All  through 
the  Scriptures  He  saw  the  turning  of 
prophecy  towards  Himself.  He  recognized 
the  moral  and  spiritual  purpose  in  the  parts 
which  He  placed  in  a  different  order  of  im- 
portance. Just  so  a  physician  to-day  might 
look  through  the  sanitary  requirements  of  the 
Mosaic  law  and  pronounce  them  insufficient. 
He  might  say  that  our  modern  knowledge  of 
disease  has  outdated  these  requirements. 
But  he  might  rejoice  to  claim  the  Hebrew 
leaders  as  worthy  of  all  imitation  in  their  in- 
tention to  make  it  a  religious  duty  to  care 
for  the  welfare  of  men  by  the  prevention  of 
disease.  The  nations  round  about  the  He- 
brews did  not  care  so  much  for  the  welfare 
of  men.  The  trend  of  the  Hebrew  religion 
in  the  direction  of  correct  principles  of  phys- 
ical living  is  immensely  significant.  So 
also  a  social  student  might  to-day  read  the 
land  laws  of  the  ancient  Hebrews.  He 
might  find  that  we  cannot  carry  out  just  such 
land  laws  to-day,  but  he  would  be  sure  to 
declare  that  these  advance  in  the  direction  of 
economic  justice,  and  that  they  are  in  prin- 
ciple of  far  loftier  conception  than  are  many 
laws  in  so-called  civilized  nations  to-day. 
The  attempts  to  guard  against  the  waste  of 
the  land,  and  the  attempts  also  to  prevent 


THE   INSTRUMENTAL   IN   CHRISTIANITY    69 

extreme  monopoly  of  land  in  private  hands 
were  very  noteworthy.  In  these  as  in  so 
many  other  instances  the  movement  of  the 
Scripture  is  interesting  because  of  its  direc- 
tion. Ideal  humanity  was  the  goal  of  the 
lawmakers  and  the  prophets.  It  should  be 
the  goal  in  our  modern  reading  of  the  su- 
preme instrument  of  the  Church.  We  are 
entitled  to  use  the  Scriptures  so  as  to  make 
them  mean  the  most  to  us.  If  we  distort 
them  they  will  not  in  the  end  mean  most  to 
us.  If  we  do  not  take  account  of  the  historic 
truth  about  them  they  cannot  mean  the  most 
to  us.  If  we  allow  ourselves  to  follow  after 
extreme  radical  or  conservative  views  which 
get  away  from  actual  basis  in  history  they 
cannot  mean  the  most  to  us.  We  are  to 
seek  to  know  all  we  can  about  them  and  to 
apply  their  revelation  in  the  wisest  manner, 
— seeking  always  for  the  best  good  of  the 
persons  for  whose  benefit  the  Scriptures  are 
before  us. 

If  we  could  all  come  to  this  position  it 
would  hasten  the  passing  of  that  conflict 
which  happily  is  dying  out, — the  conflict  be- 
tween radicals  and  conservatives  over  the 
Scriptures.  The  difficulty  here  as  with  so 
many  wrangles  of  the  sort  is  in  the  failure  to 
clear  up  the  assumptions.     One  help  in  clear- 


yo  PERSONAL  CHRISTIANITY 

ing  up  would  be  to  ask  what  is  the  direction 
of  the  Scriptural  movement.  What  are  the 
ends  in  the  kingdom  of  God?  These  are 
the  members  of  the  kingdom.  The  further 
question  then  becomes  as  to  how  we  can 
best  serve  the  persons  in  the  kingdom.  We 
take  literally  the  doctrine  that  the  Bible  is  a 
means  of  grace.  It  will  be  best  defended 
and  preserved  by  devoting  it  to  the  most  and 
the  best  use.  With  this  simple  understand- 
ing we  are  better  able  to  say  how  to  make 
the  best  use  of  it.  Some  of  the  greatest  dis- 
coveries in  the  world  have  come  as  men  have 
discovered  that  the  things  around  us  are  in- 
tended for  use.  There  was  a  time  when  men 
fancied  that  mighty  streams  of  water  were 
such  sacred  parts  of  God's  universe  that  any 
attempt  to  harness  them  could  only  be 
blasphemy.  Then  there  came  men  who  saw 
that  the  highest  reverence  towards  God's 
streams  was  to  utilize  them, — mills  and  cities 
were  the  result.  So  wath  the  Scriptures. 
They  are  not  sacred  objects  in  themselves. 
They  prove  their  divineness  only  as  they  are 
used  to  the  utmost.  The  great  betrayal  of 
trust  would  be, — in  a  day  which  is  making 
the  most  of  every  other  manner  of  instru- 
ment,— not  to  make  the  most  of  the  Scrip- 
tural   instrument.      We    cannot    bend    this 


THE   INSTRUMENTAL   IN   CHRISTIANITY    7 1 

sword  enough  to  break  it.  Sharpening  its 
edge  does  not  grind  it  away. 

The  recollection  that  these  modern  Biblical 
methods  are  wholly  instrumental  may  help 
the  preacher  in  the  work  of  preaching.  The 
sermon  is  an  utterance  of  results,  not  an  ex- 
planation of  the  details  of  the  instruments  by 
which  the  results  are  obtained.  There  is 
place  for  the  discussion  of  the  instruments, 
but  not  in  the  pulpit.  The  spectacle  of  in- 
struments is  apt  to  be  disquieting  in  any  case 
but  results  speak  for  themselves.  The  worst 
sort  of  talking  shop  is  talking  of  instruments. 
The  surgeon  anaesthetizes  his  patient  before 
he  lets  him  see  the  instrument  with  which  the 
operation  is  performed.  After  it  is  all  over 
the  instrument  can  be  exhibited  and  ex- 
plained. The  modern  Biblical  instruments 
are  enormously  beneficial  to  the  believer  but 
it  is  not  the  part  of  homiletic  wisdom  to  make 
too  free  an  exhibition  of  them  until  the  be- 
liever is  familiar  with  the  results  which  they 
produce. 

When  we  come  to  creed  and  dogma  we 
find  that  these  too  are  instruments  of  the 
kingdom  of  God.  But  some  one  will  say 
that  these  are  truth,  and  that  they  stand  in 
their  own  right.  What  is  truth  ?  Truth  in 
^he  Christian  sense  is  not  mere  intellectual 


72  PERSONAL   CHRISTIANITY 

formula.  It  is  the  truth  of  life.  It  is  life. 
When  Jesus  spoke  of  Himself  as  the  Truth 
we  are  not  to  think  that  He  had  in  mind  the 
primarily  intellectual.  But  of  course  the  ob- 
jector means  that  the  statements  of  the  creed 
are  true  as  statements.  Even  if  they  are 
they  have  as  their  justification  the  feeding 
and  strengthening  of  the  mind  of  the  be- 
liever and  are  to  be  judged  by  their  suc- 
cess in  doing  so.  In  religion  we  are  not 
always  in  the  realm  of  objective  proof.  The 
only  way  we  can  judge  of  the  validity  of  be- 
lief is  by  noting  what  happens  to  the  man 
who  beHeves. 

The  instrumental  character  of  the  creeds  is 
very  apparent  as  we  look  at  the  causes  of 
their  origin.  Even  if  they  are  final  state- 
ments incapable  of  improvement  they  were 
framed  for  a  purpose.  The  Church  was  in 
danger  of  splitting  into  fragments  because  of 
lack  of  authoritative  pronouncement  on  this 
or  that,  or  there  was  required  a  compact 
shaping  of  the  truth  for  fighting  purposes,  or 
for  purposes  of  exposition.  Or,  we  may  be- 
lieve, the  Christian  community  had  attained 
through  historic  processes  to  a  fresh  insight 
which  must  be  set  forth  systematically  to 
mark  an  advance. 

We    can    sometimes   discern   a   tendency 


THE   INSTRUMENTAL   IN   CHRISTIANITY    73 

most  clearly  when  it  is  working  on  a  min- 
imum of  material.  Suppose  we  look  at  one 
or  two  dogmas  where  the  tendency  is  very 
clear  from  the  fact  that  there  is  little  to  work 
upon.  For  example  consider  the  Roman 
Catholic  doctrine  of  the  immaculate  concep- 
tion. To  provide  for  the  sinlessness  of  Jesus 
the  Roman  Church  teaches  a  sinlessness  of 
Mary  so  complete  that  any  ancestral  tendency 
towards  evil  was  cut  off  from  Mary.  What 
is  the  explanation  of  this  doubtful  dogma? 
Just  the  necessity  of  providing  for  the  sin- 
lessness of  Jesus.  The  doctrine  is  entitled  to 
larger  respect  for  its  recognition  of  a  diffi- 
culty and  for  its  courage  in  facing  it  than  for 
any  positive  contribution  towards  the  solu- 
tion. Or  take  the  doctrine  of  purgatory. 
Very  worthy  motives  are  back  of  the  doc- 
trine. One  motive  is  to  deal  with  the  prob- 
lem of  the  spiritual  condition  of  souls  at  the 
best  manifestly  unfit  without  further  prepara- 
tion for  a  perfect  environment.  Another  mo- 
tive is  to  keep  close  the  connection  between 
the  ones  who  have  passed  on  and  those  who 
remain  here.  Of  course  in  a  field  devoid  of 
data  the  bare  tendencies  back  of  the  doctrine 
are  about  all  that  is  apparent,  but  the  motives 
are  entitled  to  respect. 

But  other   creed-making  tendencies   have 


74  PERSONAL  CHRISTIANITY 

more  to  work  upon.  Take  the  historic  data 
as  to  Christ's  manifestation  of  Himself  to  His 
disciples  in  the  resurrection  appearances. 
The  items  of  the  record  are  scanty,  to  be 
sure,  but  they  are  flooded  with  the  light 
which  comes  out  of  our  familiarity  with  the 
Christ-character  and  out  of  nineteen  centu- 
ries of  the  history  of  the  Church.  If  the 
items  were  not  recorded  of  Christ  they  might 
possibly  be  dismissed  as  of  no  great  conse- 
quence, but  when  they  are  recorded  as  of  the 
career  of  Christ  the  aspect  changes.  For  the 
problem  of  Christian  thinking  is  at  least 
measurably  to  express  the  fullness  of  life  in 
Christ.  We  are  perfectly  willing  to  admit 
that  it  is  from  the  point  of  view  of  those  con- 
vinced of  the  eternal  life  in  Christ  that  we 
read  the  story  of  the  resurrection  appear- 
ances. The  Church's  appreciation  of  Christ, 
dealing  with  the  recorded  data,  results  in  the 
dogma  that  Christ  passed  through  death  and 
revealed  Himself  to  His  disciples  in  such  fash- 
ion as  to  convince  them  that  He  liveth  for- 
evermore.  In  a  word  the  pressure  of  the  life 
of  Christ  is  the  driving  force  in  creed-making. 
In  this  or  that  detail  the  items  of  creed  as  to 
Christ  may  need  improvement,  but  the  creeds 
are  not  as  likely  to  err  from  overstatement  as 
from  understatement.     We  have  not  a  Christ 


THE   INSTRUMENTAL  IN   CHRISTIANITY    75 

who  shrinks  within  the  creedal  phrases  which 
we  make  for  Him,  but  one  who  outgrows  the 
phrases.  The  life  of  the  Person  is  the  end 
which  we  are  trying  to  set  forth.  All  our 
instruments  are  inadequate, — inadequate  not 
so  much  through  maladjustment  as  through 
lack  of  size.  The  great  fact  is  Christ  Him- 
self. He  has  been  the  dynamic  shaping  the 
creeds.  The  separate  items  of  the  creeds 
have  been  so  many  attempts  by  successive 
ages  to  put  into  formal  terms  a  measure  of 
the  impact  of  Christ.  The  creeds  are  both 
results  of  the  Personal  Force  which  stands  at 
the  centre  of  the  Christian  system,  and  also 
instruments  to  help  us  to  know  Christ.  The 
Life  does  not  shrink,  we  repeat,  but  grows  in 
size  when  set  in  the  larger  frame  of  the  ad- 
vancing statements  of  the  ages.  This  or 
that  creed  could  be  spoken  of  as  an  attempt 
to  construct  a  lens  with  which  to  read  the 
Christ-thought  the  better,  if  it  were  not 
that  the  figure  is  so  inadequate.  The  mean- 
ing of  Christ  is  so  vast  that  it  is  always  out- 
standing,— needing  no  lens  for  its  discern- 
ment. The  creeds  have  been  attempts  of  the 
Church  to  utter  for  herself  in  compendious 
phrases  the  imprint  which  Christ  has  left  on 
a  particular  time.  They  were  partly  instru- 
ments of  self-expression, — the  Church  feeling 


76  PERSONAL  CHRISTIANITY 

that  she  must  burst  forth  into  exclamation 
and  declaration.  After  that  they  possessed 
expository  and  argumentative  value. 

What  we  said  in  discussing  the  Scriptures 
we  say  again  in  speaking  of  creed.  The 
question  as  to  the  usefulness  of  a  creed  is 
not  always  easily  answered.  The  immediate 
and  original  demand  for  this  or  that  formula 
may  have  passed  away.  But  because  I  do 
not  believe  a  particular  article,  say  of  Cal- 
vinism, I  have  no  call  to  sneer  at  the  lack  of 
usefulness  of  Calvinism.  I  may  thus  show 
myself  a  spiritual  kinsman  of  the  tourist  who 
could  see  no  usefulness  in  the  Parthenon. 
The  practical  utility  is  not  all.  Some  sys- 
tems of  theology  are  of  perennial  intellectual 
worth  as  religious  creations,  deserving  look- 
ing at  for  the  stimulus  and  thrill  which  they 
impart  to  the  mind.  The  systems  are  at 
least  wonderfully  made.  They  gratify  in- 
tense intellectual  cravings  on  the  part  of 
thinkers, — inadequate  as  they  may  be  as 
permanent  formulations.  And  acquaintance 
with  them  helps  us  bring  ourselves  into  a 
spiritual  unity  with  the  mighty  men  of  faith, 
gone  on  before,  who  have  left  not  too  numer- 
ous a  race  of  spiritual  descendants.  The 
purpose  of  the  more  important  creeds,  no 
matter  when  uttered,   was  that  of  Christian 


THE   INSTRUMENTAL   IN   CHRISTIANITY    77 

thinking  to-day, — to  exalt  Ciirist  with  the 
very  highest  intellectual  tribute.  So  far  as 
these  greater  creeds  are  concerned  more  than 
one  devout  life  which  has  not  accepted  this 
or  that  formal  statement  has  found  brooding 
over  the  creeds  nevertheless  a  source  of  spir- 
itual quickening.  Such  creedal  utterances 
are  not  dead  to  one  capable  of  discerning 
their  aim.  As  ends  in  themselves  to  be  cher- 
ished above  all  else  their  value  would  be  less 
than  as  instruments  and  centres  of  inspira- 
tion tending  to  quicken  the  life  of  the  faith- 
ful. 

And  this  brings  us  to  our  attitude  towards 
the  religious  declarations  of  our  own  later 
time.  Here  once  more  we  ask  that  the  di- 
rection towards  which  a  doctrine  points  be 
kept  in  mind.  A  statement  serves  a  two- 
fold purpose :  it  utters  as  far  as  possible  the 
thought  of  the  speaker,  and  it  addresses  it- 
self to  the  intelligence  of  others.  The  life 
needs  of  both  speaker  and  of  him  spoken  to 
are  the  imperative  facts.  The  person  speak- 
ing and  the  person  addressed  are  the  ends 
in  themselves.  The  self-expression  of  the 
persons  speaking  and  the  enlightenment  and 
quickening  of  those  addressed, — these  are 
the  chief  considerations.  Not  forgetting  that 
intellects  have  legitimate  appetites  and  that 


78  PERSONAL  CHRISTIANITY 

Statements  of  doctrine  must  give  heed  to 
scientific  and  logical  and  rational  grounds, 
we  must  insist  that  all  doctrines  are  instru- 
ments and  succeed  or  fail  by  the  extent  to 
which  they  fulfill  their  purpose  in  use.  What 
manner  of  appeal  do  they  utter  to  the  whole 
man?  How  thoroughly  do  they  serve  the 
largest  and  best  life  ?  Will  a  man  by  accept- 
ing them  become  more  or  less  ?  Will  he  be- 
come better  or  worse, — for  a  man  cannot 
sincerely  marry  his  mind  to  a  doctrine  with- 
out becoming  better  or  worse.  Dealing  ad- 
mittedly with  a  realm  where  strict  objective 
knowledge  is  out  of  the  question  the  creed 
can  only  be  looked  upon  as  an  instrument 
for  the  furtherance  of  right  religious  life,  and 
the  only  test  is  the  quality  and  volume  of 
life  which  follows  acceptance  of  the  creed. 
Of  course  the  effects  of  some  beliefs  can  be 
foreseen  by  any  man  of  common  sense.  The 
straight  flying  in  the  face  of  fact  or  logic  will 
bring  a  fall  sooner  or  later ;  but  in  the  inter- 
pretation of  scientific  fact  and  logical  con- 
clusions the  best  creed  is  the  one  which  as 
an  instrument  furthers  the  best  kind  of  life. 
By  the  rights  of  humanity  we  are  entided  to 
deal  just  as  freely  with  the  creedal  statements 
which  we  all  have  to  make, — and  each  of  us 
has  in  one  way  or  another  to  fashion  some 


THE   INSTRUMENTAL  IN   CHRISTIANITY    J^ 

sort  of  creed  for  himself, — as  the  calls  of  the 
largest  life  seem  to  make  necessary. 

An  interesting  study  in  practical  creed 
making  can  be  pursued  by  observing  a  proc- 
ess going  on  before  our  very  eyes  in  the 
unfolding  of  socialism.  You  will  understand 
that  I  am  not  taking  sides  one  way  or  an- 
other as  to  the  worth  of  socialism.  I  use 
this  illustration  simply  because  I  can  speak 
of  socialism  without  taking  sides.  Here  is  a 
body  of  doctrines  held  by  more  persons  in 
Christendom  to-day  than  any  other  set  of 
doctrines  whatsoever.  And  the  doctrines  are 
in  amazingly  large  part  held  not  by  absorp- 
tion or  inheritance  but  as  the  result  of  at  least 
an  attempt  at  deliberate  reflection.  Whether 
they  think  rightly  or  not  there  are  probably 
more  persons  thinking  in  the  ranks  of  the 
socialists  than  in  any  other  group  on  earth. 
Now  socialism  in  the  main  seeks  to  accom- 
plish its  results  by  persuasion.  I  am  speak- 
ing of  the  socialist  who  thoroughly  under- 
stands his  own  system.  Such  a  socialist 
realizes  that  the  only  path  by  which  socialism 
can  draw  near  is  the  voluntary  adoption  of 
the  principles  of  socialism  by  a  good  deal 
more  than  a  majority  of  the  voters  of  any 
nation.  Socialism  cannot  succeed,  and  its 
leaders   know    it   cannot    succeed,   with   too 


8o  PERSONAL  CHRISTIANITY 

large  a  minority  of  irreconcilables.  While 
the  socialist  would  admit  that  the  resort  to 
force  here  and  there  might  apparently  hasten 
the  day  of  the  formal  coming  of  socialism  he 
knows  that  the  real  arrival  can  only  take 
place  as  the  people  are  persuaded  of  the  doc- 
trine and  intentionally  adopt  that  doctrine. 

Now  the  socialistic  doctrines  have  as  their 
goal  the  production  of  tangible  results.  This 
does  not  mean  that  they  are  contrived  solely 
for  campaign  efBcacy :  the  works  of  Marx 
strive  at  giving  a  historically  just  account  of 
industrial  evolution  from  the  beginnings  of 
industry  which  the  few  only  can  take  time  to 
read.  But  the  intent  is  primarily  to  persuade. 
It  is  interesting  then  to  note  how  the  ortho- 
dox tenets  of  socialism  change  as  the  years 
go  by.  They  change  because  they  will  not 
continue  to  work  in  their  first  form.  So  we 
have  modifications  of  the  doctrine  of  eco- 
nomic determinism  and  of  class  struggle. 
Many  of  the  Marxian  teachers  insist  in  all 
sincerity  that  they  are  not  making  doctrinal 
changes  but  they  are  doing  so  nevertheless  ; — 
there  is  nothing  commoner  in  the  history  of 
thought  than  a  man's  making  modifications 
in  a  system  to  which  he  adheres  while  pro- 
fessing that  he  is  merely  clarifying  his  mas- 
ter's utterance.     The  socialist  is — by  consent 


THE   INSTRUMENTAL   IN   CHRISTIANITY    8l 

which  reaches  even  to  his  enemies — strug- 
gUng  for  the  betterment  of  human  life  ;  and 
he  is  employing  his  conceptions  as  tools  with 
which  to  do  this.  He  is  trying  to  help  men. 
He  fashions  and  refashions  his  instruments 
as  he  moves  along.  A  very  able  and  persua- 
sive exponent  of  socialism  is  J.  Ramsay 
MacDonald,  Chairman  of  the  British  Labour 
Party.  Ramsay  has  remarked  significantly 
that  Marxism  had  to  begin  with  sharp  and 
extreme  phrasings  but  that  in  the  wielding  of 
the  instrument  the  sharpness  of  the  edge  was 
inevitably  worn  off.  If  similarly  the  edge  of 
a  Christian  creed  wears  ofif  we  are  at  liberty 
to  believe  that  perhaps  the  instrument  is 
better  for  not  being  too  sharp,  or  we  may 
sharpen  the  instrument  if  it  will  do  better 
work  for  men  when  sharpened.  So  far  as 
minor  beliefs  are  concerned  we  may  cease  to 
use  them  altogether.  Even  the  most  ortho- 
dox learn  how  to  put  some  details  of  creed 
out  of  ordinary  reach.  They  may  still  have 
them  in  the  locker, — but  in  the  remote  corner. 
If  this  is  true  of  creed  it  is  also  true  of 
ritual.  Ritual  meets  some  requirements  of 
the  religious  nature  on  the  aesthetic  side : 
and  here  we  seem  to  be  in  a  realm  where 
things  as  well  as  persons  have  value  on  their 
own  account.    The  a3sthetic  seems  peculiarly 


82  PERSONAL  CHRISTIANITY 

to  Stand  as  an  end-in-itself.  But  here  again 
the  reference  must  be  to  Hving  needs  of  living 
men.  The  Church  has  a  right  to  appro- 
priate and  baptize  anything  which  appeals  to 
fine  taste  and  true  feeling.  She  will  do  this 
whenever  she  feels  that  by  so  doing  she  can 
minister  to  human  need,  just  as  she  did  when 
she  took  over  from  what  we  would  technically 
pronounce  heathenism  a  whole  body  of  beau- 
tiful Christmas  symbols  and  consecrated  them 
to  the  delight  of  her  children.  When  ritual  is 
inadequate  it  will  be  transformed  or  supple- 
mented. Phillips  Brooks  has  told  a  pathetic- 
ally amusing  story  of  the  helplessness  of  a 
body  of  high  churchmen  who  met  to  find 
consolation  in  prayer  after  the  Chicago  fire. 
There  were  many  beautiful  prayers  in  the 
regular  collection  but  none  seemed  just 
suited  to  the  particular  type  of  affliction  then 
upon  the  nation,  and  the  worthy  brethren 
were  sadly  at  a  loss  !  In  such  plight  any 
body  of  normal  human  beings  will  find  room 
for  expression  of  religious  yearning  in  what- 
ever form  seems  best  suited  to  the  purpose 
whether  the  Church  sanctions  extemporaneous 
prayer  or  not. 

Finally  we  look  at  the  Church  itself  in  its 
instrumental  aspect.  It  will  be  recalled  that 
in  the  previous  lecture  we  drew  a  distinction 


THE   INSTRUMENTAL   IN   CHRISTIANITY    83 

between  the  more  personal  and  the  more 
artificial  aspects  of  the  Church.  The  Church 
is  the  actual  persons  bound  together  to  do 
the  will  of  God.  This  personal  community 
reaches  under  and  through  the  separate  arti- 
ficial alignments  and  includes  many  who  are 
not  technically  united  with  any  organization. 
About  the  relations  of  the  various  systems  to 
one  another  we  shall  speak  in  a  moment. 
Here  we  call  attention  to  the  spiritual  peril  of 
identifying  the  actual  personal  human  fact 
with  any  artificial  fact  like  this  or  that  partic- 
ular type  of  organization. 

The  Church  as  a  body  of  persons  actually 
knit  together  in  sympathy  is  an  end  in  itself. 
No  organizational  constitution  of  laws  and 
rules,  however,  can  have  anything  but  an  in- 
strumental sacredness.  We  may  do  well  to 
encourage  devotion  to  an  organization  as  an 
organization  but  in  such  case  the  emphasis 
must  be  upon  the  evident  fitness  of  the  or- 
ganization to  accomplish  results  which  can 
be  stated  in  human  terms.  The  Church  as 
a  creature  of  laws  and  rules  is  not  an  end  in 
itself. 

Of  course  it  is  understood  that  distinctly 
denominational  considerations  are  out  of 
place  in  a  lectureship  like  this,  but  those 
who    are    Methodists    may    recall    that   the 


84  PERSONAL   CHRISTIANITY 

strictly  instrumental  nature  of  church  or- 
ganization is  Methodist  doctrine.  John 
Wesley  never  formally  broke  from  the 
Church  of  England,  but  John  Wesley  so 
modified  the  doctrines  about  the  Church 
itself  in  the  view  of  the  thinking  world  that 
in  spite  of  all  its  professions  hardly  any 
church  can  ever  again  claim  to  be  an  end  in 
and  unto  itself  with  the  old  force.  Wesley's 
genius,  as  we  all  know,  was  preeminently 
for  management.  He  was  not  of  the  sort 
to  be  over-impressed  with  the  claims  of  a 
church  laying  stress  on  some  peculiar  sanctity 
in  itself.  Though  naturally  conservative  he 
allowed  himself  to  be  borne  along  by  the 
success  of  this  venture  and  that  until  he  was 
willing  to  undertake  almost  any  plan  which 
seemed  likely  to  benefit  men.  In  sentiment 
he  very  probably  at  the  outset  revolted  from 
any  step  so  radical  as  preaching  in  the  open 
air,  but  he  put  aside  whatever  scruples  he 
may  have  had  as  soon  as  he  saw  how  im- 
mense a  hearing  he  obtained  from  worship 
in  the  fields.  Dr.  T.  C.  Hall  of  Union  The- 
ological Seminary  has  shown  how  thorough 
a  modification  the  work  begun  by  Wesley 
wrought  in  the  churchly  conception  as  to 
the  bishopric.  In  Methodism  the  bishopric 
is   not   a   separate   order.     It   is    purely   an 


THE   INSTRUMENTAL  IN   CHRISTIANITY    85 

administrative  office.  Worthy  souls  here 
and  there  have  at  times  fancied  that  the 
episcopacy  could  be  made  more  holy  and 
commanding  by  being  constituted  a  so- 
called  higher  order,  but  the  instinct  and 
good  sense  of  Methodism  have  always  been 
sound  at  this  point.  Our  only  question  as 
to  the  episcopacy  is  as  to  its  success  as  an 
instrument.  The  only  expedient  by  which 
it  can  be  made  sacred  is  by  success  in  sacred 
work.  The  only  authority  to  which  it  is  en- 
titled is  that  of  a  sincere  purpose  striving  to 
do  the  best  possible  under  a  given  set  of 
circumstances.  The  bishopric  is  an  instru- 
ment and  has  no  right  to  be  looked  upon  as 
an  end  in  itself.  It  exists  for  the  service  of  the 
people  of  the  kingdom  and  for  no  other  pur- 
pose whatsoever.  The  welfare  of  the  per- 
sons of  the  kingdom  has  the  right  of  way 
over  all  offices  whatsoever.  We  instance 
the  episcopacy  as  an  outstanding  illustration 
of  the  power  of  a  democratic  church  to  take 
an  office  regarded  in  the  past, — and  even  in 
the  present  in  some  quarters — as  something 
holy  on  its  own  account,  and  to  strip  it  of 
every  right  to  exist  except  in  a  purely  instru- 
mental capacity.  The  only  problem  before 
General  Conferences  in  discussion  of  church 
offices, — episcopacy  included, — is  simply  as 


86  PERSONAL  CHRISTIANITY 

to  how  best  to  get  the  work  administered. 
The  question  as  to  whether  this  or  that  style 
of  instrument  is  most  hke  the  instruments  of 
the  fathers  is  out  of  place.  We  ask  merely 
as  to  what  will  most  surely  help  on  the  king- 
dom here  and  now. 

What  is  the  Church  on  earth  for?  We 
mean  of  course  in  its  institutional  features. 
First,  for  the  enlistment  and  the  training  of 
disciples.  The  immediate  duty  is  to  rouse 
men  to  an  awareness  of  the  divine  and  to 
get  them  started  in  the  righteous  course.  It 
is  the  business  of  the  Church  to  test  every 
means  which  may  open  the  eyes  of  men  to 
the  necessity  of  their  becoming  disciples.  It 
is  possible  for  the  individual  soul  to  get  along 
without  the  organizational  church  just  as  it 
is  possible  for  one  to  walk  from  San  Fran- 
cisco to  New  York,  or  to  become  educated 
without  going  to  school,  but  we  nevertheless 
preach  the  necessity  of  railroads  and  public 
schools.  If  the  evangelical  methods  of  an- 
other generation  will  not  now  succeed  some- 
thing else  must  be  resorted  to.  There  is 
nothing  sacred  in  mechanisms  after  they  have 
ceased  to  accomplish  the  desired  result.  To 
go  through  the  old  motions  without  result  is 
not  especially  intelligent.  Anything  which 
will  win  men  must  be  sacred  as  an  instrument 


THE   INSTRUMENTAL   IN    CHRISTIANITY    87 

in  the  eyes  of  the  Church.  Only,  in  all  this 
we  must  remember  that  there  are  some 
showy  maneuvers,  notably  those  of  the 
present-day  sensationalist,  which  even  as 
maneuvers  may  in  the  ultimate  outcome  cost 
more  than  they  are  worth.  The  look  ahead 
to  the  long  run  has  to  play  a  part  in  our 
evangelism. 

Once  enlisted  in  the  ranks,  the  disciples  of 
Jesus  were  taught  that  there  are  various  steps 
in  training, — to  some  of  which  we  have 
already  alluded.  There  is  the  learning  by 
the  educated  ear,  or  the  skilled  faculty.  He 
that  hath  ears  to  hear,  let  him  hear.  It  is  the 
task  of  the  Church  to  discipline  the  faculties 
of  the  disciples.  Then  there  is  learning  by 
doing.  He  that  doeth  the  words  is  like  the 
man  that  laid  the  foundations  against  the 
day  of  storm.  This  method  is  somewhat  like 
that  of  the  modern  laboratory.  The  knowl- 
edge of  the  divine  doctrine  comes  from  the 
doing  of  the  Divine  Will.  Again  there  is 
learning  through  cross-bearing,  the  develop- 
ment of  sympathy  with  the  world's  cross- 
bearers  as  we  do  the  desperately  hard  un- 
selfish tasks  which  involve  for  us  undeserved 
suffering.  This  is  an  advance  beyond  the 
knowledge  won  through  the  normal  life  of 
righteousness  :  as   being  more  intimate  and 


88  PERSONAL   CHRISTIANITY 

human.  Finally  there  is  the  knowledge 
attained  by  bearing  fruit.  Here  the  Master 
comes  to  His  favourite  theme  of  the  life  as  a 
growth.  In  bearing  fruit,  in  growing  con- 
victions, in  developing  thoughts  and  feelings 
and  deeds  which  run  their  course  through 
the  life  as  naturally  as  ripening  fruit, — in  this 
fruit-bearing  especially  the  disciple  comes  to 
know  his  Lord.  And  all  these  various  proc- 
esses of  learning  the  Church  is  to  encourage. 
She  is  systematically,  and  in  our  day  scien- 
tifically, to  train  the  faculties  of  the  disciples. 
She  is  to  insist  upon  the  incessant  practice  of 
righteousness.  She  is  to  lead  in  cross-bear- 
ing. She  is  to  create  and  keep  potent  the 
vital  conditions  in  which  wisdom  and  senti- 
ment and  power  can  arrive  at  harvest  fruitage 
in  the  life  of  the  believers. 

There  is  another  function  besides  disciple- 
ship, — that  of  apostleship.  The  Church  is  to 
send  forth  her  adherents  to  capture  this  world 
for  the  kingdom.  She  is  to  hold  fast  to 
the  doctrine  of  self-sacrifice  especially  as 
applied  to  herself.  How  can  an  organization 
fashioned  to  teach  that  the  only  salvation  for 
the  individual  believer  is  in  a  willingness  to 
lose  his  own  life  get  very  far  if  it  develops  a 
narrow  organizational  pride  which  stands 
stiffly    on    keeping   the    organization    intact 


THE   INSTRUMENTAL   IN   CHRISTIANITY    89 

when  the  task  to  be  performed  demands 
institutional  change  ?  Esprit  de  corps  is  well 
and  good  but  it  ought  to  depend  on  the  liv- 
ing contact  of  the  believer  with  his  fellows 
and  not  on  the  mechanism  of  an  organization. 
What  will  best  accomplish  the  work  of  individ- 
ual and  social  salvation  ?  This  is  the  question 
before  the  Church  as  an  organization.  What 
will  put  the  largest  human  meaning  into 
salvation  and  make  salvation  attractive  ? 

But  what  about  all  these  various  denomi- 
nations which  we  see  around  us  ?  Can  all 
these  be  alike  true  ?  All  these  are  alike,  we 
trust,  working  to  benefit  human  beings : — 
that  is  their  only  right  to  existence.  A  good 
rule  for  them  all  would  be  to  master  the  doc- 
trine that  on  their  more  technical  side  they 
are  purely  instrumental.  As  instruments 
they  may  have  immense  value.  The  doc- 
trines of  different  churches  are  not  so  many 
conflicting  absolute  truths.  They  are  differ- 
ent paths  of  approach  to  truth.  They  are 
instruments  which  make  towards  the  truth 
which  we  mean  when  we  speak  of  the  Chris- 
tian life.  A  good  m.an  is  a  good  man 
wherever  we  find  him.  He  may  have  been 
nourished  on  doctrine  which  is  very  distaste- 
ful to  the  rest  of  us,  but  if  the  doctrine  has 
made  him  good  we  have  no  right  to  object 


90  PERSONAL  CHRISTIANITY 

overmuch  to  his  spiritual  food,  though  we 
may  recommend  our  food  to  him.  He  may- 
have  wrought  valiantly  for  the  Lord  with  a 
weapon  which  we  think  crude  and  bungling, 
but  he  has  wrought  successfully.  He  has  a 
right  to  choose  his  own  weapon.  If  we  think 
our  weapon  is  better  than  his  let  us  show  its 
superiority  in  action.  We  should  dismiss  as 
not  over-intelligent  objections  like  that  of  the 
Hindu  who  asked  the  Christian  missionary 
which  of  the  scores  of  varieties  of  Christian 
truth  taught  in  India  he  should  accept. 
There  are  not  scores  of  varieties  of  Christian 
truth  being  taught  in  India  or  anywhere  else. 
The  only  final  truth  taught  is  the  truth  of  the 
worth  of  a  good  life.  Varieties  of  instru- 
ments may  be  used  in  the  presentation  of 
that  truth.  The  separate  denominational  ap- 
proach is  just  an  approach.  A  Christian 
man  is  a  Christian  man  and  not  primarily  a 
Methodist  or  a  Presbyterian.  He  may  have 
attained  to  Christian  manhood  along  the 
highway  of  Methodism  or  of  Presbyterianism. 
Human  nature  being  what  it  is  we  find  little 
profit  in  discussing  the  advantage  of  church 
unity  in  the  form  of  just  one  denomination. 
All  men  should  be  animated  by  the  one  spirit 
of  Christ  but  the  peculiarities  of  human  be- 
ings are  such   that  it  is  hardly   possible  to 


THE   INSTRUMENTAL   IN   CHRISTIANITY    QI 

persuade  all  sorts  of  men  to  wield  one  make 
of  spiritual  instrument  or  to  depend  upon  one 
type  of  spiritual  food.  The  desirability  of 
straight-out  oneness  of  organizational  form  is 
very  doubtful.  Variety  and  diversity  urge 
legitimate  claims.  Even  in  the  union  of 
commercial  bodies  into  one  organization  it 
has  often  been  found  best  to  allow  the  sep- 
arate constituents  to  keep  by  one  plan  or  an- 
other enough  of  their  separateness  to  pre- 
serve whatever  has  been  most  worth  while 
in  that  separateness.  Speaking  of  army  di- 
visions Napoleon  used  to  say :  **  Separate  for 
the  march."  There  was  a  clear  economy  in 
having  the  troops  march  even  to  the  common 
objective  point  in  different  masses.  They 
were  thus  more  easily  maneuvered,  more 
easily  fed,  more  easily  sustained  in  the  fight- 
ing spirit.  So  with  the  church  life.  Realiz- 
ing that  organizational  activities  are  alto- 
gether instrumental  we  ask  what  the  churches 
can  best  do  separately.  They  can  best  move 
separately  through  the  activities  of  church 
support  and  religious  instruction  and  training. 
But  Napoleon  also  told  his  marshals  to 
unite  for  the  battle.  There  is  need  to-day 
for  a  closer  coming  together  for  battle. 
There  must  be  some  common  plan  of  cam- 
paign,  especially    in    the    social    warfare   in 


92  PERSONAL  CHRISTIANITY 

which  the  Church  ought  to  be  a  determining 
factor!  Federation  seems  to  be  the  watch- 
word of  the  hour, — all  sorts  of  bodies  federate 
and  that  with  signal  practical  success.  If 
there  are  some  duties  which  the  organiza- 
tional instruments  can  best  perform  sepa- 
rately, it  is  equally  true  that  there  are  many 
other  tasks  which  they  can  best  undertake 
together.  In  campaigns  for  civic  righteous- 
ness, in  some  phases  of  the  attack  on  hea- 
thenism, the  work  can  best  be  done  by  the 
churches  acting  together.  Both  at  home 
and  abroad  much  can  be  expected  from  wise 
division  of  church  territory  and  by  mutual 
respect  of  that  division.  Much  can  be  ac- 
complished by  joint  activity  in  educational 
enterprises, —  especially  in  mission  fields. 
Most  of  the  objection  to  agreement  of  this 
kind  is  purely  verbal.  Colleges  under  the 
control  of  a  particular  church  feel  perfectly 
free  both  to  accept  students  from  any  and  all 
denominations  and  to  select  faculty  members 
wherever  they  can  find  the  men  best  fitted  to 
do  the  work.  And  there  is  nothing  more 
effective  in  bringing  men  to  a  right  under- 
standing of  the  difference  between  the  su- 
preme object  of  Christian  endeavour  and  the 
instruments  by  which  that  object  is  achieved 
than  just  the   getting  together  which  is  so 


THE   INSTRUMENTAL   IN   CHRISTIANITY    93 

much  a  feature  of  the  reHgious  life  of  our 
time.  If  a  man  thinks  that  his  particular 
church  has  a  monopoly  on  ultimate  truth  in 
itself  and  some  day  discovers  that  it  has  not 
such  a  monopoly  he  may  experience  a  slack- 
ening of  loyalty  to  his  denomination  if  he 
does  not  discover  at  the  same  time  the 
instrumental  function  of  the  organization. 
Once  let  him  catch  the  force  of  that  distinc- 
tion, however,  and  he  is  likely  to  become 
more  of  an  institutionalist  than  before.  He  is 
anxious  to  make  his  instrument  the  best  in- 
strument. Church  rivalry  can  be  a  bitter 
and  deadly  thing  if  we  believe  that  churches 
other  than  our  own  are  not  in  possession  of 
truth  and  are  misleading  immortal  souls.  It 
can  be  a  very  helpful  thing  if  it  leads  to  bet- 
ter and  better  puttings  of  the  truth,  better 
stimuli  of  religious  sentiment,  better  forging 
of  religious  tools. 

But  this  word  instrumental  seems  so 
mechanical !  It  seems  to  spill  out  so  much 
that  is  sacred  I  We  repeat  again  and  again 
that  we  are  not  confining  ourselves  to  the 
mechanical  in  the  use  of  the  word  instru- 
mental. In  our  sense  of  the  term  even  a 
subtle  sentiment  may  be  an  instrument. 
Sentiment  may  nourish  the  spirit  of  proper 
pride :    it  may  be  a  very  powerful  stimulus 


94  PERSONAL  CHRISTIANITY 

to  righteous  effort.  We  are  all  aware  that 
some  classic  passages  of  literature  take  on 
increased  effectiveness  in  our  memories  from 
tender  personal  associations  with  which  we 
have  connected  them,  or  from  an  appropriate- 
ness to  our  personal  lot  which  lends  the  words 
a  force  which  the  author  himself  never  could 
have  foreseen.  So  with  the  doctrines  and 
the  practices  of  a  church.  The  memories 
of  childhood,  the  stir  of  old-time  friendships, 
the  echo  of  spiritual  victories  won  in  partic- 
ular denominational  relationships, — all  these 
help  in  our  grasp  on  a  belief  or  on  a  practice. 
We  give  place  and  honour  to  all  this.  But 
after  all  this  too  is  valuable  just  for  the 
human  effect  which  it  produces.  Moreover 
considerations  of  this  kind  should  be  urged 
with  good  sense  and  complete  sincerity. 
The  sentimental  consideration  should  not 
be  allowed  to  outweigh  all  others  unless  it 
really  weighs  more.  A  church  member  who 
opposes  the  tearing  down  of  an  antiquated 
and  unsafe  house  of  worship  and  the  erection 
of  a  better  because  of  the  spiritual  blessings 
he  has  received  in  the  old  building  is  hardly 
to  be  commended.  This  principle  can  be 
given  quite  a  wide  application. 

If   we  look  at  some  phases  of  the  life  of 
Jesus   we   can   best  understand  them  as  at- 


THE   INSTRUMENTAL  IN   CHRISTIANITY   95 

tempts  to  keep  the  distinction  between  the 
personal  and  the  instrumental  in  His  attitude 
towards  the  Church.  We  have  seen  in  the 
first  lecture  that  Jesus  in  His  own  work  kept 
the  instrumental  aspects  at  a  minimum  and 
always  in  the  secondary  place.  He  had  to 
do  this  to  get  Himself  understood  at  all. 
Jesus  treated  the  Church  of  His  time  with 
profound  respect,  but  He  maintained  His  right 
to  criticize  it  in  accordance  with  the  demands 
of  personal  life.  The  Sabbath  was  made  for 
man  and  not  man  for  the  Sabbath.  The 
scribes  were  entitled  to  the  respect  due  those 
who  sat  in  the  seat  of  Moses,  but  they  needed 
to  know  that  they  did  not  act  according  to 
the  spirit  of  Moses.  The  laws  had  their 
place.  Even  tithing  should  not  be  omitted 
but  the  emphasis  should  be  put  upon  the 
more  profoundly  human  concerns  of  judg- 
ment and  mercy  and  truth.  At  an  early 
crisis  in  the  life  of  Jesus  it  seems  to  have 
been  the  chanting  of  the  priests  and  the 
flaming  of  the  altar  fires  which  awoke  Him 
to  at  least  a  deeper  realization  of  His  relation 
to  the  Father,  but  He  called  the  Temple  just 
the  Father's  house.  Towards  all  these  instru- 
ments,— the  Temple  and  the  synagogues,  the 
readings  of  the  law  and  the  calls  to  prayer, 
Jesus  acted   with   the   sole   purpose  to  make 


96  PERSONAL   CHRISTIANITY 

them  mean  most  for  men.  If  He  could  have 
had  His  way  He  would  not  have  brought 
the  Church  to  destruction, — He  would  have 
shaped  it  anew  and  filled  it  with  a  new  pas- 
sion for  men. 

We  have  thus  far  confined  ourselves  to  the 
circle  of  the  churchly  problems.  The  spirit 
of  Jesus  would  prompt  His  followers  to  move 
forth  and  make  the  most  of  the  earth  and  all 
that  is  therein  for  the  good  of  men.  The 
meek  are  to  inherit  the  earth  and  the  saints 
are  to  judge  the  world.  We  are  to  seek  the 
kingdom  of  God  and  His  righteousness,  and 
in  the  spirit  of  righteousness  we  are  to  insist 
upon  the  largest  human  use  of  all  things 
capable  of  good  use.  The  fields  of  material 
achievement,  of  scientific  and  philosophical 
and  moral  investigation,  of  social  and  na- 
tional and  international  endeavour,  are  to  be 
made  the  most  of  for  humanity  by  the  per- 
sons who  are  filled  with  the  spirit  of  Him 
who  came  to  bring  Hfe  to  men  and  to  bring 
life  more  abundantly.  But  even  such  spirit- 
filled  workers  can  be  most  successful  in  do- 
ing this  by  always  keeping  in  sight  the  dis- 
tinction between  the  things  which  are  ends- 
in-themselves  and  the  things  which  are  means 
to  those  ends. 


LECTURE  III 

THE  CHRISTIAN  USE  OF 
THE  PHILOSOPHIC  TOOLS 


LECTURE  III 

THE  CHRISTIAN  USE  OF  THE 
PHILOSOPHIC  TOOLS 

THE  first  problem  before  Christianity 
as  it  marches  out  to  world  conquest 
is  to  determine  upon  the  proper  at- 
titude towards  the  world-views  which  at  one 
period  and  another  have  commanded  the 
assent  of  their  times.  These  world-views  are 
in  part  results  and  outcomes  of  manifold 
forces  at  work  at  a  particular  era  but  they 
are  also  instruments  of  vision  and  investiga- 
tion and  adjustment  of  conduct  with  which 
men  seek  to  dominate  the  world.  Whether 
a  maturely  reasoned  view  prevails  at  any 
one  era  or  not  there  are  at  least  half-views 
and  assumptions  and  presuppositions  present 
at  all  times  which  influence  the  attitude  of 
men  towards  the  problems  of  life  and  destiny. 
Since  no  age  is  without  some  such  intellectual 
construction  by  which  the  attitudes  towards 
the  tasks  of  moral  and  social  and  racial  life 
are  determined  it  is  well  to  examine  some  of 
99 


lOO  PERSONAL  CHRISTIANITY 

the  greater  of  these  intellectual  lenses,  and  to 
ask  how  best  to  master  them. 

There  is  nothing  sacred  about  a  world- 
view  except  the  use  to  which  it  may  be  put. 
The  more  important  conceptions  which  arise 
from  time  to  time  all  claim  to  be  final,  and 
each  may  seem  so  when  it  first  appears,  but 
after  a  while  signs  of  change  become  mani- 
fest. Take  the  theory  of  evolution  which  has 
made  so  deep  an  impression  on  the  last  half 
century.  Probably  no  theory  has  ever  laid 
more  insistent  claim  to  be  final  truth  than  has 
the  doctrine  of  evolution,  and  this  in  spite  of 
the  fact  that  the  last  word  of  evolution  ap- 
pears to  be  continuous  movement  and  rest- 
less change.  But  wisdom  has  come  to  the 
evolutionists  with  the  passage  of  years  and 
their  view  is  now  a  zvorkiiig  hypothesis,  of 
prodigious  value  because  of  the  prolific  re- 
sults of  evolutionary  investigation.  The  in- 
telligent evolutionist  nowadays  does  not 
pronounce  evolutionary  doctrine  as  in  itself 
sacred.  There  was  for  a  season  a  tendency 
towards  a  hard-and-fast  orthodoxy  among 
the  followers  of  Darwin,  but  the  evolutionist 
to-day  feels  free  to  make  any  modification 
which  he  sees  fit  in  this  once  so-sacred 
theory.  In  the  realm  of  theory  nothing  has 
final  sacredness.     Even  if  we  should  hit  upon 


CHRISTIAN  USE  OF  PHILOSOPHIC  TOOLS    lOI 

a  putting  of  the  truth  which  could  not  in  any 
detail  be  improved,  even  that  would  have 
only  instrumental  sanctity.  The  thinkers 
whose  minds  the  formula  might  satisfy  would 
be  the  only  ends  in  themselves. 

Assured  then  of  liberty  to  deal  with  the 
theories  of  the  universe  as  the  demands  of 
our  total  life  may  prompt  us,  we  point  out 
the  path  to  mastery  of  world-views  over 
which  the  Church  may  one  day  move.  First, 
the  Church  cannot  neglect  the  duty  of  search- 
ing criticism  of  world-views  in  their  more 
technical  phases.  The  opponents  of  Chris- 
tian teaching  have  found  some  paths  of  at- 
tack yielded  too  easily  by  Christian  scholars. 
These  scholars  have  too  often  allowed  them- 
selves to  be  thrown  on  the  defensive.  An 
anti-religious  theory  would  arise  making 
vigorous  assaults  on  the  Church,  and  the 
Church  would  give  itself  too  much  to  the 
campaign  of  defense.  More  justifiable  tac- 
tics would  have  been  more  aggressive.  In 
actual  warfare  a  downright  fighting  spirit  is 
the  effective  defense.  The  Church  has  often 
been  scared  into  ridiculous  panic  by  the  raids 
of  theories  which  could  not  themselves,  if 
challenged,  have  given  good  foundation  in 
reason  for  their  own  existence.  The  war 
should    sometimes    be    carried    into    Africa. 


I02  PERSONAL  CHRISTIANITY 

The  Church  is  here,  and  the  presumption  is 
that  she  has  a  right  to  be  here.  Before  any- 
opposing  system  is  accepted  in  her  place 
that  system  should  be  challenged  throughout. 
When  the  gust  of  atheistic  materialism  which 
broke  over  Christendom  in  the  later  seventies 
had  died  down  somewhat  and  the  Christian 
teachers  had  begun  in  turn  to  put  questions 
to  the  materialists,  there  arose  an  outcry 
from  the  materialistic  camp  as  if  this  were 
presumptuous.  But  this  turning  of  the  ta- 
bles is  the  correct  strategy.  Most  systems 
hostile  to  Christianity  stand  on  shaky  foun- 
dations, and  the  Church  needs  to  train  men 
who  even  on  the  technical  side  are  able  to 
point  out  the  shakiness  and  to  do  some  shak- 
ing. For  example  take  the  broad  issue  be- 
tween theism  and  atheism.  The  atheist  has 
often  shouted  triumph  because  he  has  to  his 
own  satisfaction  established  the  proposition 
that  theism  cannot  account  for  the  universe. 
But  if  theism  cannot  account  for  the  universe, 
can  atheism  do  any  better  ?  This  alternative 
has  too  often  escaped  the  attention  of  theists 
and  atheists  alike.  Atheism  as  a  positive 
and  not  a  negative  construction  is  somewhat 
unstable.  So  with  mind  as  over  against 
matter  as  an  explanation  of  all  things.  It  is 
a   favourite   plan   of   attack  on    Christianity 


CHRISTIAN  USE  OF  PHILOSOPHIC  TOOLS    103 

boldly  to  declare  the  inadequacy  of  mind  as 
an  explanation  of  the  universe.  But  if  mind 
cannot  explain,  how  about  non-mind,  or 
matter  ?  All  of  this  seems  obvious  but  it  is 
sadly  overlooked.  We  have  many  defenders 
of  the  faith  ;  there  is  room  also  for  assailants 
of  the  unfaith. 

Secondly, — the  Church  should  not  miss  the 
apologetic  force  of  Christian  character  itselL 
For,  after  all,  the  triumphs  of  the  most  highly 
trained  scientific  and  logical  reasoners  are 
not  of  supreme  moment.  These  victories 
are  seldom  over  the  direct  opponent.  They 
accomplish  something  in  interesting  and  en- 
couraging the  bystanders,  especially  if  the 
bystanders  are  already  inclined  to  believe. 
But  while  most  bystanders  are  fond  of  a  log- 
ical battle  now  and  then,  they  soon  weary  of 
such  conflict.  World-views  are  not  alto- 
gether established  by  the  arguments  put 
forth  for  them,  nor  are  they  overthrown  by 
the  assaults  made  upon  them.  Not  many 
persons  reason  much,  even  though  they  may 
think  they  do.  So  that  a  second  way  of 
meeting  world-views  which  threaten  the 
Christian  system  is  actually  to  produce  situa- 
tions which  no  sensible  observer  can  over- 
look,— to  create  a  quality  and  volume  of 
Christian   life   which   cannot  be  put   to  one 


I04  PERSONAL  CHRISTIANITY 

side,  but  which  will  persistently  come  back 
the  instant  it  is  pronounced  banished,  and  to 
which  the  world- view  must  ultimately  adjust 
itself. 

A  third  method  is  more  effective  still, — the 
utilization  of  whatever  is  good  in  the  various 
views.  Regarding  these  systems  as  tools  at 
the  best,  or  the  worst,  the  Church  seeks  to 
redeem  the  instruments  by  making  the 
worthiest  use  of  '^em  for  the  interests  of 
human  life.  The  Church  shows  her  largest 
vitalities  not  when  she  breaks  to  pieces  her 
captured  booty  or  casts  it  into  the  fire,  but 
when  she  makes  it  Christian,  or  when  she 
remoulds  the"  instruments  once  turned  against 
herself  for  the  sake  of  exalting  the  truth  which 
these  instruments  were  forged  to  overthrow. 
We  hurriedly  pass  in  review  these  different 
methods  as  applied  to  some  world-views  ;  for 
these  methods,  (i)  of  critical  understanding 
of  world-views,  (2)  of  life-protest  by  volume 
and  quality  of  character  against  what  is 
inadequate  or  unworthy  in  them,  (3)  of  utiliza- 
tion of  what  is  good  in  them,  are  the  gist  of 
what  we  mean  by  the  Christian  use  of 
intellectual  constructions. 

The  Christian  religion  has  relied  much  on 
the  world-view  of  common  sense.  Here  are 
persons    and    here    are  things, — with   scant 


CHRISTIAN  USE  OF  PHILOSOPHIC  TOOLS    105 

question  as  to  what  is  back  either  of  the  per- 
sons or  the  things.  Things  are  made  of  stuff 
undoubtedly  here.  Now  the  sensible  plan  in 
leading  the  common-sense  individual  as  we 
meet  him  in  the  Church  is  not  to  travel  too 
far  into  the  domain  of  formal  reasoning.  It 
seems  that  almost  anybody  ought  to  be  strong 
enough  to  listen  to  an  argument  which 
strips  "  things  "  of  their  fancied  all-sufficiency, 
but  the  things  seem  so  undeniably  here  that 
they  constitute  a  tough  problem.  The  im- 
mediate task  is  so  to  preach  and  so  to  foster 
the  living  activities  of  the  Church  as  to  pre- 
vent the  things  from  getting  the  upper  hand. 
Why  do  many  disciples  make  failure  of  life  ? 
They  are  not  argued  out  of  the  Christian 
belief,  but  things  get  into  the  saddle  and  then 
of  course  ride  mankind.  The  preaching  of 
Jesus  was  for  the  most  part  aimed  just  at 
building  the  spirit  into  strength  that  would 
refuse  to  be  saddled. 

Men  who  have  wrought  overmuch  with 
things  may  slip  off  into  materialism,  and  they 
may  do  so  sincerely.  The  material  world  is 
such  a  factor  with  us  that  the  theory  that 
matter  is  all  seems  at  moments  overwhelm- 
ing. We  congratulate  ourselves  that  the 
battle  with  materialism  is  pretty  well  over, 
but  we  would  better  not  be  too  sure.     Just  at 


Io6  PERSONAL  CHRISTIANITY 

present  indeed  there  is  less  outspoken 
materialism  than  for  a  long  time.  The 
arguments  for  the  omnipotence  of  matter 
have  become  tiresome.  The  contemporary 
materialist  bores  us.  Our  state  of  boredom 
should  not  conceal  from  us,  however,  the 
possibility  that  the  materialistic  argument 
may  almost  any  day  receive  a  fresh  state- 
ment which  will  again  make  it  attractive  and 
seductive.  Such  a  statement  seems  about 
due.  Almost  any  one  reading  closely  the 
arguments  of  the  materialists  wonders  why 
they  have  not  stated  their  case  more  strongly 
than  they  have.  Quite  likely  the  future  will 
see  more  forceful  phrasings  of  materialism 
than  any  that  have  ever  yet  appeared.  And 
when  they  come  what  is  the  soundest  attack 
for  the  Church  ? 

One  attack  will  be  of  course  the  insistence 
upon  the  inadequacy  of  materialism.  It  is  not 
necessary  to  try  to  anticipate  the  reasonings 
here.  Quite  likely  they  will  be  in  substance 
just  an  emphasis  on  the  impotence  of  materi- 
alism to  explain  the  facts  of  life  as  we  see 
them,  especially  the  facts  of  mind  and  knowl- 
edge. But  the  decisive  advance  is  from 
another  quarter.  That  is  simply  calling 
attention  to  the  inescapableness  of  spiritual 
facts.     If  there  is  in  existence  a  quality  and 


CHRISTIAN  USE  OF  PHILOSOPHIC  TOOLS    107 

volume  of  Christian  life,  showing  forth  char- 
acter in  its  highest  growths,  that  quaUty  and 
that  volume  are  the  effective  protest  against 
materialism.     If     there     are     multitudes    of 
persons    obviously    above   yielding    to    the 
earthward    pull    of   matter   that   superiority 
must  be  heeded.     For  a  theory  which  pro- 
fesses   to    be    a    world-view    must    at   least 
attempt    systematic    completeness.     Just   as 
the  sinner  is  a  stubborn  fact  for  the  theist  so 
the  saint  is  even  a  more  stubborn  fact  for  the 
materialist.     There  is  less  hope  of  explaining 
the  saint  in  materialistic  terms  than  there  is  of 
explaining  the  sinner  on  a  theistic  basis.     As 
to  the  sinner  in  a  theistic  world  we  can  say 
that  a  man  of  his  own  free  choice  may  refuse 
to  sanction  the  plans  of  the  universe  ;  as  to  the 
saint  in  a  materialistic  world  we  can  only  say 
that  matter  has  for  the  moment  reached  such 
a    steadiness  of  equilibrium  that  the  effect 
is  a  singularly  well-ordered  character.     The 
miracle  of  particles  of  matter  balanced  in  this 
equilibrium  for  ten,  twenty  or  fifty  years  has 
just  to  be  taken  as  a  miracle.     But  the  miracle 
is    quite    a    miracle,    especially    when    the 
particles   of   matter  may  for  the  most  part 
report  themselves  in  pain  and  uproar.     The 
greater  the  number  of  saints,  the  greater  the 
difficulty  for  the  materialist. 


Io8  PERSONAL  CHRISTIANITY 

A  group  of  persons  living  superior  to  the 
downward  pull  of  matter  is  a  protest  against 
materialism.  We  do  not  wish  to  speak 
harshly  of  the  materialist,  but  it  is  a  com- 
monplace that  materialism  of  behaviour 
makes  for  materialism  of  thought.  This  is 
true  even  though  many  materialists  are  as 
self-denying  as  ascetics  and  as  self-sacrific- 
ing as  martyrs.  We  do  not  say  that  ma- 
terialism in  conduct  is  the  only  force  which 
makes  for  materialism  in  theory,  but  it  is  an 
effective  force.  Anything  then  which  offsets 
subordination  to  the  earthiness  of  matter 
makes  for  the  reign  of  the  spirit.  The 
Church  is  to  face  the  conditions  out  of  which 
materialism  arises.  Extremes  of  prosperity 
and  of  adversity  alike  may  conduce  to  ma- 
terialism,— prosperity  because  the  rich  see  so 
much  of  matter  that  they  come  to  believe  in 
the  omnipotence  of  matter,  and  adversity  be- 
cause the  poor  see  so  little  of  matter  that 
they  are  constantly  craving  more.  Espe- 
cially in  handling  social  questions  is  it  in- 
cumbent on  the  Church  to  keep  before  her 
eyes  the  danger  of  these  extremes  which 
breed  doubt.  To  quote  the  familiar  figure 
the  swamps  out  of  which  the  doubts  arise  to 
poison  men  must  be  drained. 

The   presence   of  good   men   in  the  world 


CHRISTIAN  USE  OF  PHILOSOPHIC  TOOLS    109 

living  in  protest  against  the  lures  of  ma- 
terialism is  then  a  block  in  the  path  of  ma- 
terialistic theory.  But  it  is  not  by  protest 
alone  that  victory  is  to  be  won.  Protests 
may  thwart  but  they  do  not  vanquish.  More- 
over the  mental  faculties  which  are  in  chronic 
protest  may  not  remain  healthy  or  normal. 
For  example  the  spectacle  of  men  withdraw- 
ing from  a  community  which  has  gone  mad 
in  the  pursuit  of  riches  to  shut  themselves  up 
in  monasteries  would  be  a  bracing  protest 
against  the  sordidness  of  that  crazy  world, 
but  it  would  not  be  altogether  effective  after 
all.  The  world  would  go  howling  in  derision 
past  the  doors  of  the  monasteries.  There  is 
a  more  excellent  way,  even  though  a  more 
difficult  way.  It  is  often  easier  to  be  extreme 
than  to  be  moderate.  It  is  easier  to  be  a 
materialist  giving  one's  self  up  to  earthly 
pursuits,  or  to  be  an  ascetic  cutting  one's  self 
off  from  physical  pleasures  than  it  is  to  walk 
in  the  midst  of  the  material  world  and  use 
that  world  for  a  righteous  purpose.  The 
highest  Christian  answer  to  both  theoretical 
and  practical  materialism  is  the  control  of 
matter  in  the  name  of  spirit. 

Matter  is  one  of  the  apparently  fixed  ele- 
ments of  our  present  existence,  even  though 
its  function  is  instrumental.     We  must  adjust 


no  PERSONAL  CHRISTIANITY 

ourselves  to  matter,  and  the  only  legitimate 
adjustment  is  that  of  high-minded  control. 
The  sin  of  materialism  is  in  erecting  a  purely 
instrumental  creation  into  an  end  in  itself. 
The  Christian  followers  of  that  Lord  who 
while  He  had  no  earthly  possessions  of  His 
own  nevertheless  moved  untainted  by  covet- 
ousness  among  the  possessions  of  others  and 
told  how  to  use  houses  and  lands,  and  of 
that  apostle  who  declared  that  the  whole 
creation,  travailing  in  pain,  awaits  the  reve- 
lation at  the  hands  of  the  sons  of  God,  are  to 
seize  the  earth  to  make  it  bloom  like  the 
garden  of  the  Lord.  Spiritual  health  is  so 
closely  linked  with  earthly  conditions  in  our 
present  sphere  that  it  is  hard  to  see  how  the 
world  could  have  so  long  undervalued  the 
significance  of  the  material  for  the  spiritual. 
The  materialist  is  using  in  a  wrong  spirit  an 
instrument  that  does  not  properly  belong  to 
him.  The  instruments  belong  in  the  hands 
of  those  who  can  do  better  with  them.  In  a 
word  an  objection  to  materialism  is  that  it 
does  not  get  enough  from  matter.  Matter 
itself  is  degraded  in  the  outworking  of  ma- 
terialism ; — it  is  much  more  fortunate  under 
the  sway  of  the  spiritualists.  In  the  attempt 
at  control  of  matter  some  indeed  will  come 
to  grief,  for  they  will  fall  under  the  spell  of 


CHRISTIAN  USE  OF  PHILOSOPHIC  TOOLS    III 

wealth  or  earthly  power.  Demas  left  the 
Apostle,  having  loved  this  present  world. 
But  a  body  of  men  controlling  material  goods 
as  tools  for  the  sake  of  the  spiritual  welfare 
of  men  constitute  an  argument  which  the 
avowed  materialist  will  find  it  hard  to  dis- 
lodge. 

At  this  juncture  some  one  will  object  that 
all  the  above  is  obviously  unfair.  The  ob- 
jector will  protest  that  some  materialism 
does  admittedly  result  from  giving  the  ma- 
terial things  the  wrong  stress,  but  that  much 
other  materialism  comes  from  pure  specu- 
lation and  splendid  search  for  truth,  that 
many  materialists  are  such  sincerely,  that 
they  have  made  costly  personal  sacrifices 
for  the  sake  of  their  belief.  All  such  put- 
tings of  the  argument  as  ours  are  not  fair  to 
those  noble  explorers,  we  are  told.  In  re- 
joinder we  repeat  our  disavowal  of  any  in- 
tent to  represent  materialists  as  personally 
evil-minded.  All  that  we  maintain  is  that 
the  system  works  down  and  not  up.  We 
cannot  always  tell  what  a  system  is  by  not- 
ing its  effects  on  the  lives  of  those  who  first 
formulate  it.  The  character  of  such  persons 
is  very  likely  ''set"  long  before  they  come 
to  the  formulation  of  their  theories.  They 
may  not  be  thrown  far  ofi[  the  track  by  their 


112  PERSONAL   CHRISTIANITY 

own  formulations.  But  when  the  theory  has 
been  taught  to  others  whose  minds  are  still 
plastic,  the  inherent  logic  of  a  false  system 
may  be  expected  to  reveal  itself.  Here 
again  there  may  be  restraints  which  make 
the  adherents  of  the  creed  better  than  the 
creed,  but  the  ultimate  trend  will  be  in  a 
false  direction.  And  even  if  there  is  not 
such  an  outcome,  the  spectacle  of  Christian 
people  employing  for  the  further  victories  of 
Christianity  the  very  tools  which  the  materi- 
alist has  wielded  against  the  Christian  system 
is  illuminating. 

Take  the  honour  given  to  law  in  material- 
ism. How  trenchantly  **  the  reign  of  law  " 
was  urged  against  Christian  belief  in  the  old 
days  of  some  thirty  years  ago  I  How  mighty 
the  "  reign  of  law  "  seems  to  some  opponents 
of  the  Christian  system  to-day !  And  yet 
how  completely  this  very  conception  has 
been  incorporated  into  more  recent  Chris- 
tian thinking !  When  once  the  Christian 
reasoner  saw  that  law  never  could  have 
more  than  an  instrumental  function  all  his 
fear  vanished.  While  there  are  still  some 
who  imagine  that  there  is  an  inherent  incom- 
patibility between  the  scientific  idea  of  law 
and  the  idea  of  the  presence  of  God  in  the 
world     the    general    understanding    is    fast 


CHRISTIAN  USE  OF  PHILOSOPHIC  TOOLS    II3 

coming  to  be  that  God  works  through  law. 
The  reign  of  law  can  mean  nothing  but  the 
reign  of  whoever  is  back  of  the  law.  Of 
course  the  materialist  will  correct  us  by  say- 
ing "  whatever  is  back  of  the  law."  But 
when  we  see  discovery  of  and  subjection  to 
scientific  law  used  mightily  for  the  advance- 
ment of  the  spiritual  faith  we  may  be  justi- 
fied in  demanding  more  conclusive  reasons 
for  belief  in  materialism  than  any  which  have 
yet  been  offered  us.  One  inescapable  diffi- 
culty in  materialism  is  just  this, — that  while 
law  may  be  omnipotent  it  was  mind  that  dis- 
covered the  omnipotence,  and  mind  in  the 
act  of  discovery  goes  back  to  its  old  position 
of  supremacy  over  the  law.  But  the  materi- 
alist says  this  is  too  fine  and  far  fetched. 
We  insist  then  that  the  materialist  must  con- 
sider the  significance  of  the  fact  that  the 
laws  of  nature  are  used  to-day  as  never  be- 
fore for  setting  the  conceptions  of  Christi- 
anity on  high.  We  are  willing  that  the 
Scriptures  be  studied  in  accordance  with 
scientific  principles, — every  reputable  theo- 
logical school  to-day  insists  upon  such 
study  ;  we  insist  upon  the  investigation  of 
the  phenomena  of  Christian  experience  by 
the  experts  in  psychology ;  we  declare  our 
purpose  that   the  teachings  of  the  historians 


114  PERSONAL  CHRISTIANITY 

shall  be  applied  to  the  study  of  the  career 
of  the  Church.  And  all  we  ask  in  return  is 
that  the  scientific  student  be  willing  on  his 
part  to  face  facts  when  he  meets  them.  If 
there  is  found  an  eEhcacy  in  prayer,  if  the 
power  which  was  lodged  in  the  Hebrew  re- 
ligion cannot  be  explained  by  the  external 
historic  causes  at  work,  if  there  is  manifestly 
more  in  the  inner  vitality  of  the  conceptions 
of  the  Church  than  can  be  accounted  for  by 
the  economic  or  social  spirit  of  a  particular 
period,  if  the  beliefs  of  the  Church  are  seen 
to  be  not  merely  effects  but  also  causes,  if 
above  all  there  is  in  the  life  of  the  Christ  a 
fountain  of  spiritual  efficiency  which  ex- 
hausts the  customary  historical  tabulations 
and  classifications, — if  all  or  any  of  these 
results  appear  all  that  we  ask  is  that  in  the 
spirit  of  scientific  inquirers  we  be  allowed  to 
take  scientific  account  of  the  findings.  It  is 
more  scientific  to  admit  that  some  things 
cannot  be  explained  on  the  basis  of  scientific 
principles  as  we  now  have  them  than  to 
maintain  that  everything  must  be  classifi- 
able within  our  present  scientific  set  of 
pigeonholes.  In  any  event  we  shall  use 
what  science  we  have  with  a  spiritual  mo- 
tive. It  is  very  well  to  declare  that  the 
scientist    seeks    knowledge    as    an    end    in 


CHRISTIAN  USE  OF  PHILOSOPHIC  TOOLS    II5 

itself  without  any  reference  to  the  purpose 
to  which  his  discoveries  are  to  be  put  and 
that  scientific  knowledge  is  an  end  in  itself, 
but  all  this  can  mean  is  that  there  are  higher 
and  lower  uses  for  science.  When  we  speak 
of  knowledge  as  an  end  in  itself  what  we  are 
likely  to  mean  is  that  the  contemplation  of 
this  knowledge  renders  delight  to  a  fine  type 
of  highly  cultivated  mind,  rather  than  sup- 
plies hints  to  some  mechanical  inventor. 
But  if  the  knowledge  is  thus  finely  inspira- 
tional it  is  still  instrumental, — instrumental 
for  quickening  a  mind  without  regard  to  the 
commoner  use  to  which  the  mind  may  direct 
the  knowledge.  All  our  previous  discussion 
has  been  vain  if  we  have  not  made  it  clear 
that  we  believe  in  knowledge  of  this  high 
degree,  and  in  the  contemplation  of  such 
knowledge  as  likely  to  stimulate  the  Chris- 
tian community  as  readily  as  it  will  stir  the 
intellects  of  any  who  deny  Christianity. 
There  is  no  reason  why  a  man  should  be  a 
materialist  to  get  the  thrill  which  comes  with 
the  revelations  of  astronomy.  There  is  no 
reason  either  why  he  should  be  a  calculator 
for  a  nautical  almanac.  He  may  be  a  be- 
liever in  Christianity,  finding  in  the  latest 
researches  into  the  starry  marches  across  the 
skies  commentary  upon  the  psalmist's  word 


Il6  PERSONAL  CHRISTIANITY 

that  night  unto  night  showeth  knowledge. 
He  may  affirm  with  another  behever  that  he 
is  thinking  God's  thoughts  after  Him.  But 
whether  to  matter-of-fact  or  to  rare  specu- 
lative desires  the  knowledge  ministers. 
With  this  belief  in  the  instrumental  function 
of  knowledge  the  Christian  is  in  position  to 
make  the  utmost  of  the  idea  of  law.  There 
are  diversities  of  instruments.  There  are 
hammers  and  hand-saws,  but  there  are  also 
organs  and  pictures.  Nothing  in  our  con- 
ception of  the  Christian  attitude  towards  the 
instrumental  warrants  the  contention  that  we 
must  use  instruments  for  any  purpose  lower 
than  that  for  which  they  are  intended.  The 
Christian  life  is  the  life  of  the  whole  man, 
and  the  Christian  seeks  for  instruments 
which  will  minister  to  the  whole  man.  The 
attitude  of  the  Christian  community  then 
towards  the  doctrine  of  materialism  will  be 
first  to  ask  what  in  materialistic  theory 
should  be  cut  away  and  then  to  proceed  to 
cut.  After  that  the  query  will  be  as  to  what 
can  be  offset  by  Christian  character.  Most 
important  of  all  will  be  the  question  as  to 
what  can  be  used  for  human  welfare.  Some 
parts  can  be  used  for  the  material  relief  of 
men ;  some  for  the  intellectual  satisfactions 
without  any  reference  to  so-called  utilitarian 


CHRISTIAN  USE  OF  PHILOSOPHIC  TOOLS    II7 

needs ;  some  for  the  gratification  of  aesthetic 
and  spiritual  demands  of  highest  rank.  The 
utiHzation  of  whatever  is  worth  while  in  ma- 
terialism is  Christianity's  answer  to  and  con- 
quest of  materialism.  The  process  of  con- 
quest has  gone  far  enough  in  our  own  day 
to  constitute  a  very  unusual  triumph.  Be- 
cause the  conquest  has  moved  on  under  our 
eyes  we  may  have  missed  something  of  its 
meaning.  For  one  marvel  that  investigation 
begun  by  materialism  has  forced  Christian- 
ity to  surrender,  Christianity  has  won  back 
from  materialism  a  thousand  marvels. 

And  so  with  idealism,  which  stands  over 
against  materialism  in  protest  against  ma- 
terialism. Idealism  can  be  just  as  irreligious 
as  materialism  ;  and  so  far  as  concerns  out- 
come in  the  life  the  extreme  materialist  and 
the  extreme  idealist  may  join  hands.  The 
idealist  may  put  on  a  loftier  air  than  the 
materialist  because  he  claims  a  nobler  line  of 
intellectual  ancestry,  but  that  may  be  about 
the  only  difference.  The  critical  objections 
to  the  idealism  which  ranks  thought  above 
thinkers  are  well  enough  known  to  the  pro- 
fessional teachers,  but  most  others  find  both 
the  doctrines  and  the  criticisms  so  dry  that 
they  pay  little  attention  to  them.  This  is  no 
reflection     on    the    patient    metaphysicians. 


Il8  PERSONAL  CHRISTIANITY 

They  have  to  travel  through  the  dry  places. 
But  the  effective  protection  against  extreme 
idealism  is  the  protest  of  living  consciousness 
against  the  extremes  of  idealism  and  after 
that  the  seizure  of  rational  idealism  for  the 
purposes  of  Christianity.  One  danger  of 
idealism  is  a  logic-chopping  which  reduces 
the  whole  realm  of  life  to  barrenness  ;  but  if 
there  are  persons  who  refuse  to  be  made 
barren  they  are  in  so  far  an  answer  to  radical 
idealistic  theory.  The  proof  that  the  ideal- 
istic theory  is  inadequate  in  its  extreme  form 
is  the  manifestation  that  there  is  more  in  life 
than  mere  ideas,  and  that  vital  movement  is 
more  than  strictly  logical  movement.  This 
does  not  imply  a  resort  to  the  illogical,  but 
it  does  imply  emphasis  on  the  indispensable 
emotional  and  aesthetic  and  volitional  na- 
tures. Another  danger  in  idealism  is  the 
tendency  to  pantheism  and  monism.  Men 
are  but  phases  of  the  All.  The  decisive 
counteraction  here  is  personal  protest  against 
being  anaesthetized  into  any  idealistic  All. 
If  life  meant  no  more  to  us  than  to  the  Hindu 
we  might  welcome  some  Buddha  who  could 
administer  spiritual  chloroform,  but  we  have 
been  insisting  from  the  beginning  that  Chris- 
tianity makes  the  most  of  the  individual  per- 
sons.    Christianity  develops  beings  who  re- 


CHRISTIAN  USE  OF  PHILOSOPHIC  TOOLS    II9 

fused  to  be  absorbed.  Surrender  to  the 
"divine  thought"  does  not  mean  soul-ob- 
literation. The  more  deeply  Christian  a  man 
becomes,  the  more  deeply  individual  he  be- 
comes. The  development  of  a  community 
of  individual  Christians  is  an  antidote  to  the 
idealism  which  is  tainted  with  pantheism. 
Of  course  the  strict  idealist  will  respond  that 
his  system  soars  above  all  such  trifling  argu- 
ments,— which  may  be  true, — but  before 
pantheistic  idealism  can  be  convincing  it 
must  step  down  from  absolutism  and  es- 
tablish some  connection  with  workaday 
notions  which  may  indeed  be  relative,  but 
which  are  nevertheless  real  enough  to  those 
of  us  who  are  tangled  in  the  present  web  of 
relationships.  Incidentally  the  high  absolu- 
tists might  be  aided  by  a  sense  of  humour. 

A  further  guard  against  that  pantheism  to 
which  extreme  idealism  tends  is  the  cultiva- 
tion of  an  intense  moral  sense.  If  there  is 
no  separateness  in  the  individual  man  and  if 
his  will  cannot  be  called  into  account  in  any 
degree  for  the  presence  of  moral  evil  in  the 
world,  then  this  moral  evil  must  be  pro- 
nounced a  necessary  constitutent  of  the  mon- 
istic All.  We  unload  our  sins  upon  the  All 
and  make  him,  or  it,  responsible.  Now 
Christian   reflection   gets   on   very  well  with 


I20  PERSONAL  CHRISTIANITY 

the  presence  of  physical  evil  in  the  universe, 
— and  that  not  by  ignoring  such  physical 
evil  but  by  frankly  recognizing  it  and  by 
struggling  to  reduce  it  and  by  waiting  for 
the  light  of  a  further  explanation  which  we 
may  not  now  be  quaUfied  to  receive.  But 
with  moral  evil  the  difficulty  is  more  serious. 
If  we  are  to  have  a  God  at  all  we  might  just 
as  well  have  a  God  worth  while,  and  a  per- 
sonal or  impersonal  God  of  whose  character 
our  sins  are  an  expression  would  hardly  be 
morally  worth  the  intellectual  labour  to  find 
Him.  We  say  "  intellectual  labour,"  for  that 
is  about  the  only  path  to  the  deity  possible 
to  the  strictly  intellectualistic  explorer.  A 
furious  opposition  to  moral  evil  in  the  heart 
of  vast  masses  of  people  would  at  once  sug- 
gest the  impossibility  of  carrying  this  battle 
up  into  the  Godhead  of  the  pantheistic 
scheme.  Chronic  belHgerency  and  self-con- 
tradiction in  the  inner  phases  of  the  deity 
would  not  be  much  of  a  fulfillment  of  that 
craving  for  unity  which  has  given  absolute 
systems  so  much  of  their  power. 

In  a  word  this  whole  absolutist  construction 
is  the  outcome  and  expression  of  a  demand 
for  unity  on  the  part  of  the  human  mind. 
The  absolutist  has  made  his  absolutism  ap- 
pear  as  if  it  stood  ofl  by  itself  in  its  own 


CHRISTIAN  USE  OF  PHILOSOPHIC  TOOLS    121 

right,  but  whatever  value  there  may  be  in 
absolutism  results  from  its  ministry  to  men's 
needs.  Absolutism  is  related  to  our  needs 
partly  as  their  expression  and  partly  as  their 
supposed  fulfillment.  The  entire  system  is  a 
commentary  on  confounding  ends  and  instru- 
ments. Thought  in  the  impersonal  sense  is 
an  instrument.  In  any  other  sense  thought 
is  a  thinker  thinking.  But  this  purely  instru- 
mental creation,  thought,  gets  around  in  front 
of  the  thinker  and  becomes  the  finality  in 
itself.  Impersonal  thought  has  to  be  brought 
back  to  the  instrumental  place.  It  has  to  be 
led  to  its  place  and  must  be  commanded  to 
sit  there.  Hardly  any  arrogance  in  the  his- 
tory of  intellect  has  approached  that  of  the 
absolutists,  and  hardly  any  arrogance  has 
been  less  justified.  The  arrogance  has  sought 
to  obliterate  persons  in  the  name  of  the  prod- 
uct and  output  of  personal  life.  Yet  these 
persons  have  considerable  powers  of  protest, 
— enough  at  least  to  establish  for  them  the 
claim  to  belligerent  rights. 

But  the  idealistic  program  has  merits  and 
can  be  mastered  for  the  Christian  community. 
On  the  intellectualistic  side  it  wins  room  for 
about  the  only  respectable  theistic  argument 
we  have, — the  argument  that  things  cannot 
exist  apart  from  the  divine  thought,  though 


122  PERSONAL   CHRISTIANITY 

the  realists — old  and  new — are  right  in  in- 
sisting that  there  is  in  things  an  element  not 
created  by  human  thought.  If  we  keep  im- 
personal thought  in  the  strictly  instrumental 
place  there  is  value  in  the  teachings  of 
idealism.  In  the  system  there  is  indeed  that 
chronic  tendency  to  confuse  thought  and 
thinker  but  this  is  readily  detected,  and  once 
on  our  guard  against  it  we  need  have  no 
fear.  The  best  way  to  conquer  idealism  is 
to  use  it.  For  example  take  the  claim  that 
nothing  can  exist  apart  from  thought. 
Thought  relations  are  woven  through  every- 
thing. This  truth  is  sometimes  so  empha- 
sized as  to  leave  the  impression  that  there  is 
nothing  in  the  universe  except  ideas,  and  all 
the  warmth  of  feeling  and  doing  are  left  out. 
But  making  allowance  for  this  one-sidedness 
it  is  part  of  the  duty  of  the  Christian  com- 
munity to  weave  thought-relationships  per- 
sistently into  the  fabric  of  daily  life.  We 
teach  that  Christian  love  is  central  in  the 
realm  of  personal  existence,  but  too  often  we 
make  no  attempt  to  rationalize  Christian 
love,  or  even  to  make  it  sensible.  Of  course 
we  know  that  in  many  a  crisis  we  get  light 
just  by  taking  sides,  and  by  forcing  a  con- 
clusion by  a  decision  of  will.  It  is,  however, 
a  duty  to  try  to  bring  all  activities  into  ac- 


CHRISTIAN  USE  OF  PHILOSOPHIC  TOOLS    1 23 

cord  with  reason.  Accord  with  reason  may 
occasionally  demand  that  we  act  without  a 
reason  which  we  can  articulate,  but  Christian 
sentiment  and  Christian  activity  need  more 
and  more  to  be  lifted  from  the  lower  plane  of 
impulse  and  to  be  informed  with  idea.  Chris- 
tians are  to  vindicate  their  claim  to  divine 
sonship  in  the  realm  of  severe  creative  think- 
ing, in  which  realm  their  duty  must  be  to 
make  all  their  activities  conform  to  reason. 
Society  is  harassed  to-day  by  the  preaching 
that  men  ought  to  act  according  to  their  in- 
stincts even  if  these  instincts  be  chiefly  ani- 
mal. Christianity  should  develop  a  vigorous 
logic  with  which  to  insist  that  life  is  not  hu- 
man until  the  activities  move  in  the  direction 
of  intelligence.  We  would  not  harden  the 
Christian  life  down  to  rigid  logic  of  a  me- 
chanical stiffness,  but  we  hold  that  if  the 
Christian  life  is  not  in  the  stern  sense  rational 
it  is  not  entitled  to  be  called  human.  This 
power  of  intellectual  system  building  is  one 
of  the  distinctively  human  abilities.  And  if 
the  system  does  not  run  off  into  such  ab- 
surdity as  that  of  putting  the  creation  ahead 
of  the  creator  the  idealism  which  takes  for  its 
motto  that  nothing  should  be  attempted  apart 
from  rational  principle  is  wholesome.  Is 
Christian    love    to   be    just   a   smiling   and 


124  PERSONAL   CHRISTIANITY 

amiable  well-wishing  and  good  humour  ?  Or 
is  it  to  be  the  love  which  seeks  light  of  fact 
and  reason  everywhere  as  to  what  is  best  for 
men,  and  acts  in  harmony  with  that  light  ? 
Abounding  in  faults  as  is  the  teaching  of  the 
idealists,  impossible  as  it  is  to  "  deduce  "  to 
the  extent  which  they  claim,  the  idealists 
may  well  be  imitated  by  the  Christian  com- 
munity in  their  firm  insistence  upon  the 
rights  of  thought.  The  human  mind  in  its 
daily  relationships  is  not  likely  to  think  too 
much.  The  average  believer  is  not  prone  to 
become  enough  sickled  o'er  with  the  pale 
cast  of  thought  to  be  in  peril  when  he  listens 
to  idealistic  speculators.  And  moreover  the 
tendency  to  materialism  in  one  shape  or  an- 
other is  so  inevitable  at  all  times  that  most 
of  us  are  helped  by  an  idealistic  bath  quite 
frequently.  The  pressure  of  the  world  of 
things  is  so  unrelenting  that  the  perusal  of 
the  most  extreme  idealism  sometimes  serves 
well  as  a  counter  pressure.  And  so  long  as 
we  keep  our  eyes  open  and  do  not  bewilder 
ourselves  into  fancying  that  we  are  face  to 
face  with  absolute  finality  we  shall  do  well  to 
resort  to  the  idealistic  philosophers  now  and 
then  as  veritable  means  of  grace. 

Some     storm-battered     intellects,    having 
made    the    rounds    from  common  sense   to 


CHRISTIAN  USE  OF  PHILOSOPHIC  TOOLS    125 

materialism  and  then  by  reaction  to  idealism, 
find  themselves  at  the  end  in  agnosticism. 
Others  arrive  at  agnosticism  by  a  different 
route.  Agnosticism  is  with  some  just  intel- 
lectual weakness  or  weariness.  The  mind  is 
tired  out  so  that  it  cannot  believe.  In  con- 
fronting such  agnosticism  the  Christian 
leader  will  attempt  to  tone  up  the  whole  life. 
A  distinguished  scientist  used  to  say  that  he 
always  felt  a  tendency  to  agnosticism  when 
the  currents  of  his  life  began  to  run  low, 
and  that  he  would  find  his  way  out  by  read- 
ing the  greater  poets,  or  by  listening  to  the 
hymns  of  the  faith,  or  by  reaching  out  for 
closer  fellowship  with  dear  friends.  Some 
agnosticism  is  the  outcome  of  spiritual  starva- 
tion, though  we  use  the  terms  without  re- 
flection upon  the  character  of  the  agnostics 
themselves.  They  may  not  be  to  blame  for 
the  dwarfing  experiences  through  which  they 
have  passed.  But  in  helping  such  impover- 
ished souls  the  soundness  of  life  in  the 
Church  itself  should  be  an  aid.  The  whole 
life  of  the  Church  ought  to  be  so  quick  and 
stirring  as  to  arouse  life  in  others.  The  posi- 
tive note  should  be  ever  ringing.  The  stu- 
dents of  Christian  thought  in  recent  years 
have  done  much  for  us  in  demonstrating 
that  the  experiences  on  which  Christian  opin- 


126  PERSONAL   CHRISTIANITY 

ion  depends  rise  and  fall  with  the  rise  and 
fall  of  the  vitality  of  the  inner  man  ;  hence 
the  more  reason  why  everything  about  a 
Church  should  suggest  vigour.  This  can  only 
mean  in  the  last  analysis,  of  course,  the  vigour 
of  the  persons  who  compose  the  Church. 

Much  fluent  criticism  of  the  Church  falls 
to  the  ground  as  soon  as  we  realize  the  effect- 
iveness of  the  Church  in  thus  creating  the 
conditions  out  of  which  belief  arises.  A 
writer  in  a  very  reputable  magazine  devoted 
quite  a  stretch  of  space  recently  to  the  con- 
tention that  the  Church  must  stand  or  fall 
with  the  answer  to  an  inquiry  put  to  this 
particular  correspondent  by  a  newspaper  re- 
porter who  pulled  forth  his  note-book  to  take 
down  the  answer,  —  the  question  being : 
*'  What  is  the  Church  doing  that  I  can  report 
to  my  paper  ?  "  Every  few  days  somebody 
raises  the  same  sort  of  interrogation.  In  our 
hesitation  before  the  question  we  may  yield 
ourselves  to  a  momentary  feeling  of  distress 
because  we  forget  the  different  meanings  of 
**  doing."  The  word  may  mean  just  those 
actual  achievements  of  aggressive  campaign- 
ing which  a  newspaper  would  be  likely  to 
*'  play  up  "  with  catchy  head-lines  in  a  daily 
issue.  The  most  important  events  cannot 
thus  be  played  up.     That  from  one  hundred 


CHRISTIAN  USE  OF  PHILOSOPHIC  TOOLS    12/ 

to  a  thousand  people  assembled  yesterday  at 
a  service  which  in  song  and  prayer  and  ser- 
mon was  forceful  with  unanalyzable  power  in 
creating  the  conditions  out  of  which  belief 
grows  is  not  news  in  the  technical  sense. 
The  present  speaker  happens  to  be  ac- 
quainted with  the  work  of  a  metropolitan 
preacher  whose  sermons  seldom  abound  with 
direct  demolitions  of  unbeliefs  or  even  with 
exhortations  to  detailed  duties.  The  minister 
is  a  man  of  abounding  spiritual,  intellectual, 
and  physical  vitality.  Those  who  hear  him 
for  thirty  minutes  on  Sunday  are  caught  in 
the  momentum  of  that  vitality, — or  rather 
they  are  for  the  moment  drenched  with  the 
life  of  a  man  who  can  fill  other  people  with 
his  own  vitality.  This  sort  of  service  does 
not  make  newspaper  copy  except  occasion- 
ally, but  the  good  work  goes  on  not  occasion- 
ally but  continually.  Ask  a  man  why  he 
goes  to  such  a  church  and  he  may  reply 
vaguely  that  the  service  makes  him  feel 
better, — at  which  the  scoffer  may  smile,  but 
out  of  that  "feeling  better"  comes  a  firmer 
belief  and  a  completer  freedom  from  doubt. 

The  best  reply  to  the  doubter  is  the  pres- 
ence not  so  much  of  beliefs  as  of  believing 
persons.  Agnosticism  should  be  met  by 
Christian  daring.     The  venturesomeness  of 


128  PERSONAL   CHRISTIANITY 

faith,  especially  when  it  leads  to  expanding 
and  improving  life,  is  the  reply  to  the  doubts 
of  the  times.  The  theoretical  objections  to 
the  possibility  of  walking  are  solved  by  walk- 
ing. The  objections  to  belief  are  solved  by 
believing.  The  believers  who  attain  to  life 
by  their  belief  are  the  actual  facts  that  make 
doubts  difficult.  If  Christianity  ever  loses 
this  quality  of  magnificent  daring  it  will  cease 
to  be  the  Christianity  of  Christ.  The  belief 
in  God,  the  belief  in  men,  the  belief  in  the 
possibility  of  filling  the  whole  world  of  men 
with  the  spirit  of  Jesus, — these  are  the  bold 
ventures  which  show  forth  the  daring  of 
Christianity.  Hope  grows  by  its  own  exer- 
cise. The  persons  actually  at  work  at  the 
relief  of  world-wide  heathenism  or  at  the 
redemption  of  cities  and  nations  from  civic 
evils,  do  not  seem  easily  discouraged.  If 
now  such  persons  were  clearly  becoming 
more  and  more  erratic,  if  they  were  all 
cranks  and  visionaries,  we  might  say  that 
their  faith  draws  them  out  of  touch  with  the 
realities  which  centre  around  sanity.  That 
word  ''  sanity  "  is  badly  overworked,  but  we 
probably  mean  by  it  a  living  union  with  the 
forces  which  are  normal  and  healthy  and 
human.  The  mass  of  missionaries  and  social 
workers,  those  facing  the  most  discouraging 


CHRISTIAN  USE  OF  PHILOSOPHIC  TOOLS    1 29 

tasks,  seem  to  be  highly  sane.  Common 
sense  might  seem  to  impel  them  to  quit  their 
tasks  and  go  home,  but  the  most  sensible 
seem  to  stay  longest  on  the  tasks,  and  the 
ones  who  give  up  in  despair  are  those  likely 
to  develop  aberrations  and  eccentricities. 
The  queer  missionaries  are  those  who  have 
abandoned  the  field.  Most  of  them  are  back 
at  home.  The  aberrant  social  reformers  are 
not  the  heroes  of  the  battle-line  struggling 
with  vice  and  squalor. 

But  let  us  hasten  to  remind  ourselves  that 
there  is  a  place  in  the  Christian  community 
for  a  spirit  of  agnosticism  which  is  at  bottom 
faith, — the  faith  of  willingness  to  leave  some 
problems  unsolved,  with  confidence  that  the 
results  can  be  left  in  the  hands  of  the  Father 
in  heaven.  If  we  get  at  the  cause  of  agnos- 
ticism in  some  persons  we  may  find  it  to  be 
the  reaction  from  too  extensive  claims  to 
knowledge  either  on  their  own  part  or  on  the 
part  of  some  believers  with  whom  they  have 
been  associated.  Take  one  theme  very  im- 
portant to  us  all, — the  belief  in  immortality. 
Many  Christian  believers  in  immortality  do 
not  say  much  about  their  belief,  and  that  for 
the  reason  that  they  do  not  wish  to  seem  to 
assume  more  knowledge  than  they  possess. 
They    feel   convinced   of   their  essential   im- 


I30  PERSONAL   CHRISTIANITY 

mortality  as  sons  of  the  Father,  but  just  how- 
to  construe  the  conditions  of  eternal  life  they 
make  no  claim  to  know.  They  say  frankly 
that  they  do  not  know.  There  is  no  data 
upon  which  to  frame  even  an  opinion.  All 
that  we  have  is  so  clearly  pictorial  or  else  so 
utterly  drawn  from  a  world-view  which  has 
passed  away,  like  that  of  Dante's  or  Milton's 
splendid  imaginings,  that  we  say  that  we 
have  no  knowledge  whatever  in  the  exact 
sense.  Now  this  is  a  sincere  and  reverent 
and  Christian  agnosticism.  It  is  the  agnos- 
ticism of  faith  and  not  of  doubt,  for  the 
believer  is  entirely  willing  to  leave  the  out- 
come in  divine  hands.  He  does  not  profess 
knowledge  which  he  does  not  have.  And  so 
with  scientific  or  formal  proof  of  even  the 
fundamentals  of  the  Christian  religion.  We 
have  no  proof  of  the  existence  of  God  w^hich 
will  make  any  one  believe  whether  or  no, 
without  a  venture  of  faith.  Kant  once  said 
that  the  wisdom  of  the  Almighty  had  been 
shown  us  quite  as  much  in  what  had  been 
withheld  from  us  as  in  what  had  been 
revealed.  We  shall  get  on  best  by  conceding 
the  limitations  of  our  mental  instruments. 
Some  who  think  of  themselves  as  agnostic 
are  not  really  so.  The  Christian  minister,  in 
dealing  with  doubters,  should  proceed  very 


CHRISTIAN  USE  OF  PHILOSOPHIC  TOOLS    131 

carefully.  It  may  be  that  the  man  who  is 
outside  the  organizational  fellowship  because 
he  doubts  is  a  more  intelligent,  or  more 
reverent,  or  more  believing  disciple  than 
some  who  are  within.  Some  within  may  not 
question  because  they  may  not  be  over- 
supplied  with  the  instruments  for  questioning. 
There  is  a  sphere  in  Christian  experience 
for  legitimate  suspension  of  judgment.  The 
simple  recognition  of  this  will  keep  some 
from  leaving  the  Church  because  of  supposed 
agnosticism,  and  will  certainly  aid  in  correct- 
ing the  misapprehensions  of  those  who  resent 
this  or  that  claim  of  the  believers  to  knowl- 
edge to  which  no  one  may  be  able  to  show 
tide. 

There  is  an  intellectual  current  to-day 
towards  a  theory  which  may  well  seem  at 
first  glance  to  be  just  what  Christianity  needs 
for  its  final  apologetics, — the  theory  of  per- 
sonalism.  There  is  indeed  in  this  doctrine 
much  which  is  in  common  with  Christian 
thinking.  We  can  employ  this  present  day 
conception  with  much  effect  for  expositional 
and  explanatory  purposes.  But  current  per- 
sonalism  stands  sadly  in  want  of  correction 
by  Christian  doctrine.  It  is  not  as  yet  a 
system.  Some  of  its  most  able  expositors 
teach  that  individuals  exist  from  all  eternity  ; 


132  PERSONAL   CHRISTIANITY 

some  set  individuals  out  in  such  independ- 
ence from  a  Creative  Person  as  virtually  to 
deprive  God  of  power  of  creation  and  leave 
Him  just  the  Bigger  Person  among  us  smaller 
folk  ;  some  push  the  doors  open  for  a  riot  of 
individualism, — and  all  leave  their  exposition 
at  rather  loose  ends.  The  existence  of  the 
Christian  brotherhood  should  point  to  the 
possibility  of  a  community  of  interest  and 
endeavour  which  will  curb  the  lawlessness  of 
the  riot  of  individuals.  Personalism  is  usually 
professed  by  those  who  have  wearily  tramped 
through  materialism  and  idealism  and  have 
come  back  to  themselves  and  others  like 
themselves  as  the  facts  of  the  universe.  So 
far  so  good, — but  the  differences  between 
persons  and  the  need  of  the  improvement  of 
persons  are  often  overlooked.  Christianity 
has  an  opportunity  with  this  latest  phase  of 
opinion  in  insisting  that  the  people  of  the 
world  are  the  ends  with  whom  we  have  to  do 
and  in  making  the  most  of  the  world  for  the 
persons  in  the  world. 

Somewhat  similar  criticism  must  be  passed 
upon  pragmatism.  Pragmatism  is  more  a 
protest  than  a  system,  and  in  the  main  it  is  a 
healthy  protest.  But  the  moment  a  man  sits 
down  to  frame  a  system  as  a  system  he  is 
dangerously  near  having  to  admit  that  there 


CHRISTIAN  USE  OF  PHILOSOPHIC  TOOLS    133 

is  something  in  the  world  beside  immediately 
practical  interests  or  else  he  would  not  be 
sitting  down  to  study.  Of  course  the  prag- 
matist  will  reply  that  he  is  trying  to  make 
his  thought  so  clear  that  any  one  can  see  that 
the  final  test  of  truth  is  in  its  practical  result. 
But  we  could  get  along  with  much  less  expo- 
sition of  pragmatism  to-day  if  its  aim  were  as 
matter-of-fact  as  it  professes  to  be.  The  truth 
is  that  the  pragmatist  to-day  is  busy  at  the 
same  ideal  that  has  drawn  on  all  the  other 
fashioners  of  systems, — he  is  trying  to  satisfy 
the  purely  intellectual  cravings  by  self-con- 
sistent formulations  as  truly  as  is  the  believer 
in  absolutism.  Tell  a  pragmatist  that  his 
system  is  not  logical  and  he  gets  excited. 
But  if  the  aim  is  merely  pragmatic  there  is 
no  reason  why  the  pragmatist  should  be 
particularly  logical.  Daily  life  can  get  along 
without  much  logic,  if  the  strictly  practical 
result  is  all.  Of  course  if  the  presence  of 
contradictions  annoys  us,  that  is  a  different 
afiair, — and  possibly  a  purely  intellectual 
afTair.  We  must  then  be  strictly  logical  as 
we  prove  that  logic  does  not  matter,  or 
logically  industrious  to  prove  that  we  have  a 
right  to  be  logically  lazy. 

The   difiFerence   between  pragmatism  and 
the  Christian  doctrine  of  knowing  by  doing  is 


134  PERSONAL  CHRISTIANITY 

in  the  order  of  results  sought  for.  The  Chris- 
tian demand  is  for  the  very  highest  order  of 
results.  The  consequences  by  which  truth 
is  indictated  in  the  Christian  view  are  the 
consequences  in  the  range  of  the  highest 
and  best.  The  whole  man  in  the  loftiest 
activities  must  be  ministered  to,  but  in 
pragmatism  which  does  not  care  much  for 
anything  except  pragmatism  itself,  the  move- 
ment is  apt  to  slip  towards  the  lower  con- 
sequences. Pragmatism  must  lock  the  brakes 
to  keep  from  sliding  down  hill.  What  is 
agreeable  to  life  depends  upon  whose  life  is 
under  consideration.  Without  some  high 
ideal  pragmatism  as  a  test  of  truth  amounts 
to  little.  Savages  or  barbarians  or  Chris- 
tians might  alike  use  the  scheme  with  differ- 
ing results  depending  upon  the  differing 
driving  ideals.  Of  course  it  will  be  under- 
stood that  we  are  not  professing  to  criticize 
pragmatism  from  the  more  technical  point  of 
view.  We  take  it  simply  as  a  means  for  the 
discovery  of  truth.  If  now  we  make  the 
truth  mean  the  highest  life  for  the  believer 
we  can  use  the  pragmatic  principle.  The 
truths  of  Christianity  lie  peculiarly  in  the  field 
of  moral  test ;  with  other  sorts  of  tests  we 
have  not  now  especially  to  do.  But  there  is 
no  path  to  the  discovery  of  specifically  Chris- 


CHRISTIAN  USE  OF  PHILOSOPHIC  TOOLS    135 

tian  truth  but  by  moral  venture.  The  result- 
ing consequences,  in  the  inner  as  well  as  the 
outer  life  of  the  whole  man  are  the  charac- 
teristically Christian  witness. 

We  have  passed  in  review  these  schemes 
of  speculation  more  for  illustration  than  for 
any  other  reason.  There  are  other  spectacles 
for  looking  at  the  universe  besides  the  ones 
we  have  mentioned.  But  enough  has  been 
said  to  show  the  function  of  Christianity  in 
dealing  with  world-views.  We  aim  to  create 
a  set  of  spiritual  facts  which  any  open-eyed 
observer  must  take  into  account.  If  a  world- 
view  itself  is  important  it  must  not  miss  so 
important  a  fact  as  the  Christian  system. 
And  the  facts  of  the  Christian  system  must  be 
kept  dynamic  and  personal.  The  conflict  is 
not  so  much  between  conflicting  world-views 
in  themselves  as  between  different  manners 
of  life.  Again,  the  difference  between  the 
life  nourished  by  one  sort  of  belief  as  over 
against  another  may  not  be  altogether  due 
to  the  difference  in  the  quality  of  the  contents 
of  the  differing  views.  All  that  may  be  re- 
quired to  make  a  hitherto  unchristian  system 
essentially  Christian  may  be  just  a  better 
emphasis.  The  scientific  instructor  who 
teaches  the  farmers  how  to  work  their  fields 
more  profitably  does  not  necessarily  advise 


136  PERSONAL  CHRISTIANITY 

them  to  throw  away  the  tools  which  they  have 
always  used  and  which  their  fathers  used 
before  them.  It  may  be  that  the  slightest 
change  in  adjusting  the  handles  to  the  plow 
will  cause  all  the  difference  between  a  tool 
that  works  beneficially  and  one  that  works 
harmfully.  Or,  in  another  sphere,  a  lens 
which  now  does  nothing  but  distort  may  with 
the  least  turn  of  a  screw  give  an  exact  image. 
Or  a  food  that  now  almost  poisons  may  lack 
just  a  little  of  one  ingredient  or  have  too 
much  of  another.  Or  the  atmosphere  may 
be  that  of  too  low  an  ah'-jde,  or  it  may 
sweep  across  a  disease-laden  swamp.  So  in 
the  utilization  of  the  world-views.  The 
Christian  attitude  is  not  critical  until  reason 
for  criticism  appears.  When  such  reason 
appears  it  is  fortunate  if  we  are  able  to  lay 
the  finger  precisely  upon  the  objectionable 
spot.  To  do  this  is  the  function  of  the  trained 
thinker.  But  with  the  objectionable  feature 
away,  and  the  whole  righdy  focused,  and  the 
good  rightly  appropriated  the  kingdom 
comes  to  its  own.  World-views  may  de- 
termine the  believer's  atdtude  towards  even 
the  details  of  daily  conduct.  How  important 
then  that  these  instruments  should  be  seized 
and  redeemed.  Swamps  can  be  redeemed 
by  draining  and  wild  lands  by  cutting  of^'  the 


CHRISTIAN  USE  OF  PHILOSOPHIC  TOOLS    137 

ranker  growths.  After  this  they  may  become 
the  most  productive  soils.  So  with  some 
ways  of  looking  at  the  universe. 

An  old  time  writer  once  found  reason  to 
marvel  at  the  universe  because  it  was  estab- 
lished upon  the  floods  and  founded  upon  the 
seas.  The  world  to  him  was  a  wonder  of 
balance, — the  dry  land  resting  steadily  upon 
a  surface  of  water.  The  psalmist's  concep- 
tion of  the  world  has  passed  away,  but  not 
his  reason  for  marvelling  at  the  universe. 
Only,  our  thought  is  not  of  a  standstill  stead- 
iness but  a  steadiness  of  direction  in  the 
midst  of  a  sea  of  changes.  The  system  of 
Christian  beliefs  is  like  a  ship  which  holds  to 
her  course  and  gets  ahead  in  spite  of  some 
rolling.  The  balance  of  the  ship  is  shown 
not  in  never  yielding  to  the  waves,  but  in 
never  capsizing,  in  an  inevitable  swing  back 
when  she  has  rolled  far  to  one  side.  There 
are  discomforts  in  such  travel,  but  we  ad- 
vance best  by  letting  the  ship  roll.  Better 
rise  and  fall  with  some  ocean  swells  than  to 
try  to  cut  through  them.  Both  the  pitch 
and  the  roll  may  help  us  forward.  That  ship 
is  the  best  instrument  which  best  gets  us 
ahead. 


LECTURE  IV 
ON  MAKING  MORALITY  HUMAN 


LECTURE  IV 
ON  MAKING  MORALITY  HUMAN 


A 


FURTHER  field  to  be  occupied  by 
the  Christian  Church  is  that  of  moral- 
ity. This  seems  like  a  wofully  com- 
monplace statement  on  its  face  but  what  we 
mean  is  that  the  field  of  moral  theory  and 
practice  is  not  to  be  permitted  to  stand  apart 
from  the  Christian  religion  as  an  independ- 
ent realm.  Of  course  we  expect  the  Chris- 
tian believer  to  be  moral  as  a  matter  of 
course,  but  we  feel  also  that  the  Christian 
capture  of  the  kingdoms  of  this  world  cannot 
be  complete  until  this  world's  morality  is 
made  Christian  in  root  and  branch. 

The  kingdom  of  moral  theory  and  practice, 
operating  entirely  on  its  own  principles  and 
without  reference  to  religion,  is  a  dreary  ter- 
ritory. It  has  from  the  beginning  lacked 
freshness  and  verdure.  Reading  a  course  in 
formal  ethics  is  like  travelling  across  a  desert 
with  the  difference  ,that  we  are  not  likely  to 
happen  upon  an  oasis  anywhere  except  per- 
141 


142  PERSONAL  CHRISTIANITY 

haps  that  of  the  charm  of  an  occasional 
author  who  is  not  quite  dried  up.  Moreover 
the  man  who  starts  out  to  be  professedly  and 
outspokenly  a  "  moral  man,"  apart  from  any 
bracing  or  reenforcement  by  religion,  too 
often  tends  towards  woodenness  without 
much  magnetism.  The  unreligious  moral 
man  never  can  understand  why  he  is  often 
dealt  with  slightingly  by  the  professedly  re- 
ligious people.  They  sometimes  speak  of 
him  indeed  too  harshly,  as  if  he  were  a  sinner 
above  all  others,  whereas  he  may  not  be  a 
sinner  at  all.  But  he  is  dreary,  especially 
when  he  falls  to  discoursing  on  morality. 
He  insists  that  he  has  no  underlying  assump- 
tions of  a  religious  cast ;  he  believes  in  right 
for  right's  own  sake  and  hates  a  lie  just  be- 
cause it  is  a  lie.  This  sounds  well  enough 
when  we  first  hear  it,  but  it  speedily  becomes 
tiresome. 

The  reason  for  the  weariness  is  not  far  to 
seek.  The  academic  moralists  have  esteemed 
their  systems  as  self-sufficient  and  their  for- 
mulas as  ends  in  themselves.  They  have 
put  the  cart  before  the  horse, — a  performance 
which  is  sometimes  interesting  but  which 
usually  prevents  rapid  travelling.  The 
phrases  which  the  moral  theorist  manipulates 
mean  little  apart  from  the  vigour  imparted  to 


ON   MAKING   MORALITY   HUMAN        I43 

them  from  full-lived  human  beings.  The 
professional  moralist  does  not  immerse  him- 
self in  the  currents  rushing  through  the  ac- 
tual world  often  enough  to  keep  his  theories 
from  evaporation.  Impersonalism  clings  to 
moral  discussion  like  a  pest.  The  progress 
of  moral  reflection  has  threshed  out  some 
good  terms  which  have  proved  indispen- 
sable, but  the  tendency  is  to  allow  these  to 
become  sufficient  in  themselves  and  to  stiffen 
into  the  impersonal. 

Consider  the  more  important  terms.  Moral 
theory  necessarily  has  much  to  say  about  the 
''chief  good."  Here  the  tendency  is  espe- 
cially likely  to  set  towards  impersonalism. 
One  thinker  declares  that  the  chief  good  is 
virtue  for  its  own  sake.  But  what  is  virtue 
in  the  abstract?  We  would  say  more  if  we 
said  that  the  virtuous  person  is  an  end  in 
himself,  or  the  chief  good.  Moreover  a  vir- 
tue which  might  not  result  in  making  life 
happier  would  not  be  worth  while.  A  mor- 
alist who  realizes  this  declares  that  the  chief 
good  is  the  sum  of  human  happiness  and 
that  it  is  the  object  of  the  moral  man  to  in- 
crease this  sum.  This  looks  promising  till 
we  try  to  get  to  close  quarters  with  it.  Sir 
Frederick  Treves  once  estimated  in  terms  of 
hours  the  sum   of  pain  banished  in  a  given 


144  PERSONAL  CHRISTIANITY 

time  by  the  London  hospitals.  He  calculated 
from  the  amount  of  anaesthetics  and  sedatives 
consumed,  and  announced  the  hours  of  relief 
from  pain  that  the  specified  quantities  of 
these  drugs  would  render.  This  is  possible 
of  course  with  an  approximate  accuracy,  but 
nothing  so  exact  would  be  attainable  if  we 
tried  to  get  at  a  sum  of  happiness.  For  then 
all  the  qualities  of  persons  have  to  be  taken 
into  measurement.  Of  course  there  are  dif- 
ferences in  pain,  but  there  is  more  nearly  a 
common  element  in  pain  than  there  is  in  hap- 
piness. Neuralgia  is  very  much  itself  where- 
ever  found,  but  a  happiness  varies.  The  ex- 
hortation to  add  to  the  sum  of  human  happi- 
ness ordinarily  forgets  that  there  is  not 
pleasure  or  happiness  in  the  world  but 
pleased  and  happy  persons.  As  soon  as  this 
is  recognized  of  course  the  inclination  is  to 
the  idea  that  the  chief  good  is  the  good  man, 
but  here  too  we  have  to  be  on  our  guard  lest 
we  manufacture  an  abstract  man  amazingly 
unlike  any  one  in  the  houses  or  on  the 
streets, — a  much  less  agreeable  creature  than 
was  even  the  economic  man  who  stalked 
with  such  stiff  steps  through  the  pages  of  the 
older  writers  on  the  political  sciences.  We 
cannot  make  anything  out  of  the  conception 
of  the  chief  good  until  we  come  to  the  good 


ON   MAKING   MORALITY   HUMAN        145 

man  but  we  must  bring  the  good  man  close 
enough  to  actual  life  to  keep  him  human. 

Another  term  of  the  moralist  is  our  old 
college-days'  friend, — the  categorical  impera- 
tive. It  would  be  difficult  to  push  anything 
along  in  ethics  or  anywhere  else  without 
some  kind  of  imperative,  but  impersonal  im- 
peratives soon  lose  their  *'  drive."  The  term 
has  to  be  reenforced  by  personal  life.  As 
soon  as  the  categorical  imperative  becomes 
not  some  supreme  command  outside  of  us 
standing  in  its  own  authority  but  just  a  de- 
mand of  whole  life  growing  in  the  direction 
of  what  seems  to  be  highest  and  best  we  be- 
gin to  obey  gladly,  but  not  before.  The  real 
imperative  is  that  of  an  appetite  or  a  crav- 
ing. We  have  heard  of  the  saint  who  be- 
came perplexed  over  the  idea  of  God  and 
finally  gave  up  the  idea,  being  convinced  that 
there  is  nothing  higher  in  the  universe  than 
the  abstract  principle  of  right.  Of  a  wor- 
shipful and  reverent  temperament  he  con- 
tinued his  prayers  but  directed  them  not 
towards  God  but  towards  the  abstract  prin- 
ciple of  right  Soon  this  saint  found  his  way 
back  to  reliance  on  a  personal  God.  Inci- 
dents like  this  here  and  there  recorded  in 
biographies  of  worthy  spiritual  leaders  are 
often  misunderstood.     It  is  easy  to  conceive 


146  PERSONAL   CHRISTIANITY 

of  such  an  incident  as  a  tribute  to  a  moral 
conception  in  itself.  As  a  matter  of  fact  the 
story  proves  nothing  so  clearly  as  the  mo- 
mentum of  a  good  life  which,  though  dis- 
tressed by  momentary  doubt,  swung  on 
through  a  prayer  addressed  to  an  empty  and 
dead  abstraction  back  to  a  normal  religious 
health. 

Then  there  is  the  term  **  intuitionalism." 
But  whose  intuitions  are  meant  ?  The  in- 
tuitions of  the  man  long  practiced  in  moral 
uprightness  may  be  reasonably  sure,  but 
what  about  the  intuitions  of  a  less  mature 
man  or  of  a  weak  man,  or  of  one  whose  life 
has  been  marred  by  immorality  ?  Of  course 
we  can  say  that  even  these  persons  should 
live  up  to  their  moral  intuitions,  but  suppose 
they  are  in  the  majority  and  try  to  impose 
their  faulty  intuitions  on  the  rest  of  us  ? 
Even  in  their  own  case  how  far  can  we  con- 
tinue to  allow  them  to  do  themselves  moral 
harm  by  following  the  intuitions  of  their  un- 
tutored or  unhealthy  consciences  ?  Utilita- 
rianism comes  in  to  help  us  out  with  a  behest 
that  we  regard  the  consequences,  but  whose 
utilities  after  all  are  most  to  be  regarded  ? 
If  we  take  account  of  inner  consequences, — 
the  consequences  which  accrue  inwardly  as 
well  as  outwardly  to  the  man  striving  to  live 


ON   MAKING   MORALITY   HUMAN        147 

aright,  intuitionalism  and  utilitarianism  would 
be  about  equivalent  to  each  other.  But 
neither  of  them  is  of  surpassing  value  until 
we  ask  as  to  whose  intuition  and  whose 
utility.  So  with  common-sense  morals. 
What  does  this  give  us  until  we  know  whose 
common  sense  we  are  to  follow  ?  We  run 
through  these  terms  of  moral  discussion 
which,  we  repeat,  are  indispensable, — to 
show  that  they  are  not  worth  much  until  liv- 
ing persons  give  them  living  content.  In 
plodding  through  the  discussions  of  the  mor- 
alists we  are  in  a  plight  somewhat  similar  to 
that  in  which  we  find  ourselves  in  reading 
the  debates  of  the  scholastics.  The  sub- 
stance of  the  debates  of  the  scholastics  is  not 
precious.  There  is  too  much  beating  of  old 
straw.  But  the  scholastics  did  build  fairly 
some  good  threshing  machines.  That  is  to 
say,  they  developed  some  very  serviceable 
instrumental  terms ;  their  terminology  has 
value  to-day.  So  with  moral  theory.  The 
terms  are  good, — but  they  must  not  be  taken 
as  important  in  themselves.  They  are  in- 
struments to  be  handled  by  moral  beings 
who  are  the  ends  in  themselves. 

It  is  not  the  purpose  of  this  lecture,  how- 
ever, to  discuss  moral  theory.  The  intent  is 
simpler.     We   wish  to  show  how  the  moral 


148  PERSONAL  CHRISTIANITY 

life  can  be  made  much  more  attractive  and 
moral  theory  much  more  vital  by  keeping  to 
the  front  the  human  interests  and  meanings. 
And  we  begin  by  remarking  that  it  is  the 
duty  of  the  Christian  community  to  force 
uppermost  the  demands  of  the  usual  and  ordi- 
nary rounds  of  life  as  of  chief  importance  for 
the  development  of  moral  character.  Moral- 
ity must  be  kept  near  the  earth.  We  know 
what  harm  has  been  wrought  in  religious  ex- 
perience by  allowing  persons,  especially 
young  persons,  to  acquire  the  notion  that 
religious  experience  consists  in  unusual 
states  of  feeling.  We  err  when  we  pick 
out  the  instant  of  rapt  insight  and  the  mo- 
ment of  exalted  uplift  and  make  these  the 
heart  of  religion.  These  may  indeed  be  the 
heart  of  religious  experience,  but  only  if  they 
have  come  out  of  experience  of  another  order, 
— the  experience  of  daily  practice  of  right- 
eousness. So  with  the  moral  duties.  These 
are  not  to  be  found  largely  in  the  realm  of 
the  unusual.  The  duties  in  time  of  ship- 
wreck or  of  war  or  of  martyrdom  have  little 
to  do  with  the  problems  which  we  meet  day 
after  day.  About  as  speedy  a  route  as  any 
out  of  the  living  contact  with  the  world  in 
which  we  live  is  to  make  such  imagined  situ- 
ations  the   topic   of   much  moral  discourse. 


ON   MAKING   MORALITY   HUMAN        I49 

The  reply  that  in  such  unusual  settings  the 
jewel  of  the  moral  principle  is  displayed  most 
advantageously  is  of  slight  worth.  Much 
more  light  on  the  extraordinary  situation  is 
likely  to  come  at  the  proper  time  to  him  w^ho 
has  been  faithful  in  the  daily  moral  practice. 
The  Christian  community  must  not  get  away 
from  the  insight  of  its  Founder.  The  daily 
tasks  are  the  important  tasks  ;  these  have 
the  right  of  way  as  lying  closer  to  actual 
human  life.  The  moral  duty  is  to  freshen 
these  daily  relationships  by  stimulating  them 
with  noble  purpose.  What  is  the  profit  of 
wrangles  over  that  threadbare  inanity  as  to 
whether  a  He  is  ever  justifiable  as  compared 
with  incessant  practice  of  integrity  in  the 
customary  duties  ?  The  only  extraordinary 
we  need  trouble  ourselves  with  is  not  some- 
thing standing  apart  from  the  ordinary,  but 
something  lifted  above  the  ordinary  by  the 
operation  of  the  same  laws  as  those  which 
control  the  ordinary.  If  the  extraordinary  is 
not  this  it  is  just  a  freak  set  of  happenings 
without  bearing  on  the  moral  career.  Chris- 
tianity is  to  make  morality  more  personal, 
closer  to  human  existence,  nearer  the  earth 
on  which  most  of  us  walk.  We  might  well 
take  for  our  motto  in  this  field  the  sanctifica- 
tion   of  the  ordinary.     We  may  learn  some- 


I50  PERSONAL  CHRISTIANITY 

thing  here  from  that  method  of  modern  in- 
struction of  children  in  the  schools  which  be- 
gins with  the  facts  nearest  home.  In  geog- 
raphy, for  example,  the  child  is  taught  why 
the  street  in  front  of  the  door  is  located  where 
it  is.  What  principles  are  set  forth  by  the 
slope  of  the  land  towards  the  stream  just  out 
of  the  village  ?  The  principles  which  deter- 
mine the  value  of  real  estate  even  on  the 
small  scale  are  substantially  those  which 
guide  nations  in  their  scrambles  for  new 
territories.  The  law  of  good  will  comes  as 
near  standing  in  its  own  right  as  any  law  in 
the  moral  kingdom ;  but  the  training  of 
youth  is  not  best  secured  by  teaching  the 
law  of  good  will  towards  abstract  or  sup- 
positious beings.  Sound  instruction  begins 
with  the  obligations  towards  the  neighbours 
or  the  playfellows.  We  must  deliver  our- 
selves from  bondage  to  the  abstract  and 
unusual.  The  concrete  and  the  usual  com- 
prise the  sphere  for  moral  training,  and  this 
emphasis  on  the  usual  is  peculiar  to  Chris- 
tianity. 

A  further  way  to  prevent  morality  from  be- 
coming unhuman  is  to  keep  one's  eyes  ofi 
one's  self.  A  man  does  not  realize  ideal 
character  by  seeking  directly  after  character. 
We  have  said  so  much  about  the  need  of  de- 


ON   MAKING   MORALITY   HUMAN        151 

veloping  ideal  life  that  some  may  think  that 
we  advise  a  man  to  set  himself  before  himself 
as  the  true  aim.  We  intend  nothing  of  the 
kind.  There  is  an  indirectness  about  suc- 
cessful moral  conquest, — that  is  to  say,  about 
that  of  the  man  who  here  and  now  attracts 
us  as  the  kind  of  person  we  should  like  to  be. 
Woodrow  Wilson  once  remarked  profoundly 
that  character  is  a  by-product.  He  meant 
that  men  do  not  attain  character  by  march- 
ing out  deliberately  to  attain  character.  The 
successful  method  is  to  lose  one's  self  in  a 
task  ;  and  the  character  grows  as  an  inevita- 
ble accompaniment.  If  we  should  ask  a 
man  why  he  gives  himself  to  this  or  that 
activity  and  should  get  the  answer :  "  To 
develop  my  character,"  we  would  put  the 
man  down  as  a  prig.  The  outright  cultiva- 
tion of  character  may  be  more  desirable  from 
the  point  of  view  of  systematic  moral  theory, 
but  it  is  not  the  path  by  which  virtue  arrives. 
He  who  would  save  his  life  must  lose  it. 
Here  we  reach  one  of  those  odd  moral  para- 
doxes which  so  abound  in  actual  experience. 
We  have  been  preaching  that  the  good  man 
is  an  end  in  himself,  but  the  moment  a  man 
begins  to  set  himself  up  as  the  end  he  begins 
to  dwarf  himself.  We  shall  have  more  to 
say  about  the  social  sphere  of  righteous  en- 


152  PERSONAL   CHRISTIANITY 

deavour  later,  but  here  we  point  out  the 
futility  of  moral  theory  which  preaches  to  a 
man  to  develop  his  character !  Even  in  the 
preaching  of  the  Gospel  it  is  possible  to 
make  a  hearer  think  too  much  about  his  own 
spiritual  state.  The  unfailing  sign  of  the 
presence  of  the  Spirit  of  God  in  human  life 
is  absorption  in  the  worthy  task.  When  the 
mind  begins  to  turn  inward  upon  itself  the 
symptoms  of  aberration  may  appear.  Intro- 
spective morality  is  not  quite  human.  It 
would  seem  part  of  the  plan  of  the  universe 
that  a  person  is  to  contemplate  himself  just 
as  little  as  possible.  Even  a  mirror  helps  but 
slightly,  for  a  man  seldom  catches  himself  as 
he  is,  and  the  clearest  reflective  surface  does 
not  give  back  all  the  truth.  Moreover  there 
seems  something  providential  in  the  fact  that 
a  man  after  gazing  into  the  mirror  goeth 
away  and  straightway  forgetteth  what  manner 
of  man  he  is.  Soiled  faces  and  tumbled  hair 
call  for  mirrors  but  there  is  small  place  in  a 
healthy  moral  life  for  introspection.  The 
less  of  it  the  better.  The  simplest  observa- 
tion reveals  that  a  man  is  seldom  himself 
while  thinking  of  himself.  The  singer  can- 
not sing,  the  player  cannot  play,  wdth  the 
hateful  question  as  to  whether  he  is  doing 
well  or  ill  ever  before  him.     Nor  can  a  man 


ON   MAKING  MORALITY   HUMAN        153 

do  well  towards  developing  the  life  which  is 
the  goal  of  Christian  morals  with  the  ques- 
tion as  to  how  he  is  doing  always  uppermost. 
"  Forget  it  "  is  often  sound  advice  to  a  man 
of  good  intentions  worried  about  his  search 
for  character. 

The  Christian  teacher  can  render  further 
service  by  showing  that  in  actual  experience 
many  questions  can  be  argued  forever  and 
that  if  we  would  keep  the  moral  field  fresh 
we  must  not  debate  everything  to  dust. 
There  is  an  inherent  indeterminateness  about 
many  moral  problems.  We  get  on  only  by 
moving  the  previous  question  and  by  taking 
a  vote.  We  have  to  assume  the  responsi- 
bility for  action  and  then  act.  We  may  not 
be  able  to  tell  what  lies  before  us  but  we 
go  ahead  nevertheless.  The  frontiersman's 
motto  that  when  in  doubt  we  are  to  go  ahead 
is  bad  advice  if  we  have  not  sought  out  the 
course  as  far  as  we  can.  If  we  go  ahead  be- 
fore we  have  done  any  scouting  the  advice 
is  bad,  but  there  is  in  some  cases  no  better 
advice  for  the  moral  life,  if  the  preliminary 
exploration  has  not  brought  back  any  definite 
report.  In  living  moral  experiences  we  have 
to  break  many  paths.  This  is  to  be  done 
with  a  consciousness  of  responsibility  but  it 
is  to  be  done.     There  is  no  more  unhealthy 


154  PERSONAL  CHRISTIANITY 

moral  state  than  that  of  constant  debate.  It 
will  not  do  to  argue  some  questions.  Even 
to  raise  them  is  to  open  the  door  of  the  pit. 
And  just  to  raise  some  other  questions  is  to 
lose  a  sacred  opportunity  for  beneficial  ac- 
tion. We  cannot  have  everything  explained 
to  us  beforehand.  Thus  it  happens  that 
some  great  leaders,  when  after  their  success 
they  are  complimented  on  their  reach  of 
vision  as  if  they  had  seen  the  end  from  the 
beginning,  avow  that  they  did  not  at  all  see 
the  end  from  the  beginning.  They  took  the 
next  step  with  the  light  they  had  and  they 
came  out  aright.  Or  if  they  failed  they  had 
the  satisfaction  of  knowing  they  were  doing 
their  best  and  then  tried  as  quickly  as  pos- 
sible to  get  back  to  the  right  path.  The 
statesmen  would  be  a  hypocrite  if  he  should 
pretend  always  or  often  to  have  foreseen  just 
what  the  unfolding  years  actually  have  re- 
vealed,— for  it  is  a  peculiarity  of  human  ex- 
perience that  we  can  see  just  a  short  distance 
before  us.  In  some  situations  the  past  sheds 
but  feeble  light.  We  cannot  tell  what  to  do, 
but  we  do  nevertheless.  This  enables  a 
species  of  moral  reasoner  to  rail  at  the  mass 
of  human  conduct  as  immoral,  or  unmoral. 
It  may  be  so,  but  this  is  the  only  way  we 
advance.     We  feel  it  incumbent  on  us  to  get 


ON   MAKING  MORALITY  HUMAN        1 55 

ahead, — to  get  ahead,  that  is,  towards  the 
ideal  human  state  which  should  mark  those 
who  are  developing  into  the  likeness  of  the 
divine.  The  explanation  of  the  success  of 
men  who  have  gone  ahead  without  formal 
reason  for  their  advance  is  this, — that  out  of 
the  doing  of  the  right  the  whole  life  itself  has 
begotten  an  intuitive  sense  of  moral  direc- 
tion. Just  as  the  woodsman  develops  a  feel- 
ing of  direction  in  the  dense  forest  when  he 
cannot  see  the  sun,  and  just  as  many  men 
have  a  sense  of  time  which  enables  them  to 
tell  within  a  few  minutes  the  hour  of  day 
without  looking  at  a  timepiece,  so  the  doers 
of  righteousness  acquire  a  discernment  that 
the  true  course  is  to  one  hand  or  the  other 
without  being  able  to  tell  just  why  they  think 
so.  They  might  debate  forever  without  be- 
ing able  to  say  more  than  this.  Now  if  this 
is  intuitionalism  it  is  the  intuitionalism  of  the 
persons  who  have  had  the  most  practice  in 
the  development  of  the  right  sort  of  intuition. 
If  we  are  to  keep  the  realm  of  morality  hu- 
man we  must  see  that  realm  as  it  is.  There 
is  no  justification  for  laying  claim  to  fore- 
sight here  which  we  do  not  have  elsewhere. 
We  do  not  shut  our  eyes  and  go  ahead, — we 
open  them  and  go  ahead, — but  that  does  not 
mean  that  we  always  see  very  far.     To  any 


156  PERSONAL  CHRISTIANITY 

one  fully  alive,  however,  this  is  part  of  the 
charm  of  the  moral  career, — this  appeal  to 
moral  venturesomeness,  not  indeed  the  ap- 
peal to  see  how  close  to  evil  we  can  steer  but 
the  appeal  to  discover  how  far  we  can  get 
towards  the  result  which  seems  to  us  most 
worth  while.  The  sphere  of  moral  advance 
has  the  same  charm  and  lure  that  other 
spheres  of  advance  have  when  they  are  en- 
tered by  those  who  carry  not  a  set  of  formal 
principles  good  for  all  time  but  who  carry  a 
consciousness  of  the  needs  of  persons  to  be 
satisfied  by  moral  progress.  In  some  courses 
we  have  attained  to  certainty.  In  other 
realms  we  are  just  beginning  to  be  moral. 
The  average  man  would  be  astounded  and 
perhaps  scared  if  he  could  now  behold  the 
morality  of  the  future.  We  are  beginning 
to  catch  foregleams  of  the  future,  especially 
in  the  realm  of  social  activities,  which  are 
disquieting  to  some  persons,  but  which  sum- 
mon others  with  a  thrill  as  of  the  discovery 
of  new  continents.  Genuinely  human  mo- 
rality is  always  in  the  making.  Conduct 
which  was  once  regarded  as  innocent  enough 
may  be  seen  after  a  while  as  evil.  The  in- 
sight of  the  seer  becomes  through  the  expan- 
sion of  intelligence  the  common  property  of 
the  masses, — and  wide-spread  moral  advance 


ON   MAKING  MORALITY  HUMAN        1 57 

results.  It  would  be  better  if  we  would  all 
keep  this  developmental,  evolutionary  aspect 
of  morality  in  mind, — especially  if  we  discern 
in  ourselves  the  tendencies  to  loftiness  of 
spirit  as  we  give  ourselves  to  abstract  moral 
contemplations.  Men  whom  we  sometimes 
pronounce  immoral  may  not  be  consciously 
so  at  all.  They  may  be  excellent  as  far  as 
they  go,  but  they  may  not  go  far.  We  are 
under  obligations  to  help  all  such  see  the 
light,  but  not  as  if  we  had  completely  at- 
tained or  were  already  perfect.  From  the 
point  of  view  of  the  conduct  which  may 
mark  the  life  of  the  years  just  ahead  of  us, 
we  may  to-day  be  sorry  spectacles.  And 
this  same  reflection  ought  to  give  us  a  his- 
toric moral  sense  in  contemplating  genera- 
tions earlier  than  ours.  A  brilliant  social 
student  recently  wrote  a  book  showing  that 
the  framers  of  the  constitution  of  the  United 
States  were  interested  in  the  capitalist  class 
and  that  the  constitution  is  in  the  light  of  its 
origin  a  capitalistic  document.  The  main 
point  is  of  economic  and  political  value  and 
the  author  himself  would  have  been  the  first 
to  admit  the  social  wisdom  of  the  founders 
of  the  constitution  in  their  time.  But  some 
of  the  reviewers  of  the  book  speak  as  if  we 
now  had  clear  proof  that  the  fathers  of  the 


158  PERSONAL  CHRISTIANITY 

nation  were  the  chief  plunderers  of  their  day 
and  generation.  As  a  matter  of  fact  what  is 
high  social  righteousness  in  one  generation 
may  be  of  doubtful  propriety  two  generations 
later  and  clearly  wrong  two  generations  later 
still. 

A  still  further  freshening  of  the  moral  field 
is  through  taking  the  whole  man  into  our 
plans.  We  have  to  live  with  men  as  they 
are  and  they  are  much  more  than  appears  in 
any  single  putting-forth  of  their  activity. 
For  example  we  hear  to-day  that  if  we  can 
only  get  people  to  know  the  consequences  of 
evil  we  shall  turn  them  from  evil.  Nothing 
could  be  more  mistaken.  The  assumption 
that  the  increase  of  knowledge  will  of  itself 
increase  moral  power  is  far  from  the  track. 
It  is  just  a  fractional  truth, — or  a  truth  based 
on  a  fraction.  A  man  is  appetite  as  well  as 
knowledge  and  his  knowledge  has  to  be 
very  compelling  indeed  to  keep  him  on  the 
right  path,  if  his  knowledge  alone  is  to  be 
depended  upon.  Perhaps  this  overempha- 
sis on  knowledge  comes  just  out  of  the  peda- 
gogical necessities  of  the  situation, — it  being 
necessary  to  make  some  minds  think  of  a 
truth  as  the  only  truth  if  they  are  to  think  of 
it  as  true  at  all.  But  if  we  conceive  of  a  man 
as  a  creature  to  be  reached  solely  by  inform- 


ON   MAKING  MORALITY  HUMAN        1 59 

ing  his  intellect  we  make  grievous  mistake. 
The  knowledge  of  the  dire  consequences  of 
an  evil  does  not  necessarily  make  the  evil 
itself  any  less  seductive.  We  have  an  in- 
stance of  this  inadequacy  in  the  present-day 
emphasis  on  instruction  in  sex  hygiene  as  a 
preventive  of  sexual  immorality.  No  doubt 
much  sexual  sin  does  come  out  of  ignorance, 
but  there  is  wide-spread  temptation  in  this 
quarter  which  cannot  be  met  by  increase  of 
knowledge.  The  men  who  know  most  of  the 
consequences  of  sex  transgressions  are  not 
always  those  who  avoid  the  transgressions 
most  determinedly.  Such  men,  caught  for 
example  in  the  clutches  of  disease,  are  often 
the  very  first  to  find  their  way  back  to  vice 
as  soon  as  the  disease  is  alleviated.  The 
training  of  the  whole  life,  including  the  will, 
is  more  significant  than  the  training  of  the 
fraction  of  a  man.  Fractional  moral  training 
is  not  over  successful  in  any  event  and  soon 
leads  to  weariness  and  disgust. 

Of  equal  inadequacy  is  the  assumption 
that  this  or  that  man  can  be  trained  apart 
from  his  fellows.  We  are  reserving  the 
larger  social  questions  for  a  later  lecture,  but 
we  must  here  comment  on  the  futility  and 
barrenness  of  trying  to  upbuild  lives  in  an 
unreal  and  strained  isolation  from  other  lives. 


l6o  PERSONAL   CHRISTIANITY 

We  have  said  that  when  we  attempt  this  we 
bend  the  mind  inward  upon  itself — compel- 
Hng  the  will  ultimately  to  spring  back  in  re- 
bellion. The  law  of  good  will  is  empty  for 
us  except  in  fellowship  with  companions  and 
fellows.  The  path  of  the  cross  is  still  the 
path  of  life.  Better  for  me  to  suffer  with 
comrades  than  to  enjoy  myself  alone.  We 
advance  not  by  minding  each  the  affairs  of 
himself  but  by  minding  the  afTairs  of  one  an- 
other. And  we  help  one  another  by  making 
a  social  climate  in  which  some  temptations 
die  out.  Take  the  basic  virtue  of  truth-tell- 
ing, which  seems  to  be  a  peculiarly  individ- 
ual virtue.  There  must  be  some  one  to 
whom  the  truth  is  to  be  told,  and  truth-tell- 
ing rests  on  the  assumption  that  the  mem- 
bers of  society  are  in  the  main  in  an  attitude 
of  good  will  towards  one  another  and  that 
men  are  entitled  to  the  truth  from  one  an- 
other. Suppose,  however,  that  this  funda- 
mental assumption  is  mistaken,  that  the 
social  condition  is  war  on  every  man's  part 
against  his  fellow,  that  every  man  is  trying 
to  cheat  every  other  man.  In  such  social 
atmosphere  the  moral  notions  become  dread- 
fully perverted.  The  highest  praise  for  the 
youth  of  fifteen  is  that  he  lies  like  a  man  of 
fifty.     No  one  feels  that  he  can  afford  to  tell 


ON   MAKING  MORALITY   HUMAN        l6l 

the  truth.  So  with  chastity.  If  the  social 
atmosphere  breeds  impurity  the  most  vir- 
tuous in  intention  have  to  fight  the  down- 
ward pull.  Society  must  furnish  the  condi- 
tions of  morality.  At  least  the  general  moral 
sentiment  must  be  such  that  men  can  afford 
to  be  honest  and  virtuous. 

And  yet  in  this  emphasis  on  the  social  we 
have  always  to  remember  that  each  man  is 
a  problem  in  himself.  Each  bears  within 
himself  at  all  times  the  mark  of  his  own  sep- 
arateness,  and  that  separateness  must  not  be 
smothered  under  a  blanket  of  too  general 
moral  law.  Making  men  moral  comes  after 
while  to  be  an  intensely  personal  affair  best 
left  in  the  hands  of  those  who  know  their 
acquaintances  best.  It  is  for  parents  and 
teachers  and  pastors  and  friends  rather  than 
for  professed  and  professional  moralists. 

The  intention  of  all  that  we  have  thus  far 
said  has  been  to  show  that  morality  must  be 
freshened  by  being  made  personal.  We  can- 
not take  any  system  as  an  end  in  itself  and 
expect  to  become  righteous  by  exalting  that 
system.  What  we  must  exalt  is  the  persons 
who  desire  to  become  better  persons.  From 
what  we  have  said  it  is  easy  to  see  that  the 
trouble  with  much  morality  is  that  it  lacks 
not   ideas  but  power ;  there  is  too  often  a 


l62  PERSONAL  CHRISTIANITY 

failure  in  dynamic.  The  function  of  the 
Christian  religion  is  to  supply  the  moral  ma- 
chinery with  energy.  The  power  can  come 
only  from  the  Christian  persons,  and  the 
Christian  persons  can  help  mightily  by 
preaching  to  the  world  the  secret  of  Chris- 
tian forcefulness. 

We  have  said  that  energy  does  not  spring 
primarily  from  knowledge.  But  when  knowl- 
edge becomes  operative  and  incarnate  in 
men  the  knowledge  takes  on  at  least  a  degree 
of  force.  Take  the  force  of  some  of  the 
Christian  ideas  as  an  inspiration  for  the  moral 
advance.  We  have  seen  that  the  end  of 
moral  endeavour  is  human  life  in  all  its 
higher  possibilities.  But  what  is  a  man? 
How  can  a  moral  thinker  say  that  it  makes 
no  difference  for  morality  how  we  answer  ? 
It  may  make  no  difference  for  morality  con- 
sidered as  a  set  of  abstractions,  but  it  ought 
to  make  vast  difference  for  morality  con- 
sidered as  an  affair  of  lives.  We  speak  of 
moral  development,  but  has  moral  develop- 
ment to  do  with  the  limited  space  of  the 
earthly  years,  or  has  it  an  eternal  race  to 
run  ?  A  lie  is  a  lie,  and  all  good  men  should 
hate  a  lie,  but  not  all  men  are  good.  The 
core  of  the  difficulty  is  to  help  men  to  be 
good   enough  to  hate   a  lie.     We   have  not 


ON   MAKING   MORALITY   HUMAN        163 

much  of  an  inducement  to  tell  the  truth  if  we 
are  to  believe  that  the  universe  is  itself  a  lie. 
If  we  exist  in  a  world  which  arouses  our 
fondest  hopes  only  forever  to  blight  them,  if 
it  ties  us  to  dear  friends  only  to  mock  us  at 
the  last  with  the  revelation  that  we  shall  see 
them  no  more,  if  it  ultimately  reduces  every- 
thing" which  we  regard  as  ideal  to  the  dust, 
the  universe  itself  is  rather  a  huge  liar.  The 
idea  of  putting  myself  out  to  avoid  telling  a 
lie  in  such  a  universe  may  approach  the 
ludicrous.  Of  course  we  know  that  this 
manner  of  remark  stirs  a  certain  type  of 
moralist  to  fury,  for  according  to  him  we 
ought  to  love  morality  for  its  own  sake. 
We  can  admit  this  duty  and  yet  maintain 
that  the  progress  of  persuading  a  majority  of 
the  people  of  the  world  to  protest  against  a 
lying  universe  by  themselves  telling  the  truth 
and  by  standing  for  the  truth  is  not  hopeful 
on  the  basis  of  disregard  of  what  the  relation 
of  the  universe  may  be  towards  upright  con- 
duct. For  when  all  is  said  the  potent  ques- 
tion with  the  average  man  concerning  the 
moral  struggle  is  :  '*  What's  the  use  ?  " 

The  Christian  meets  the  question  :  *'  What's 
the  use  ?  "  by  the  doctrine  that  a  moral  God 
controls  a  universe  which  is  but  the  expres- 
sion of   the  divine  purpose.      The  believer 


l64  PERSONAL  CHRISTIANITY 

does  not  offer  this  as  a  proposition  which  can 
be  proved.  He  does  not  affirm  that  we  can 
go  out  and  gather  scientific  data  which  will 
demonstrate  the  morality  of  the  universe,  but 
he  does  spread  this  belief  over  his  head  as  a 
part  of  his  intellectual  sky.  He  avows  that 
he  finds  light  in  that  sky.  Now  the  shining 
of  light  is  not  always  capable  of  proof.  It  is 
not  capable  of  proof  to  one  who  is  blind  or  to 
one  who  will  not  throw  open  his  windows  or 
step  out  into  the  sunshine,  or  to  one  who  will 
not  open  his  eyes.  But  light  is  the  prerequi- 
site of  almost  everything  else.  When  the 
Master  told  His  disciples  that  they  were  to  be 
the  light  of  the  world  He  seems  to  have  had 
in  mind  their  relation  to  the  moral  conduct 
of  those  who  were  to  follow  their  leadership. 
They  were  to  put  a  light  in  men's  sky. 
When  the  blind  lead  the  blind  both  fall  into 
the  ditch, — and  that  in  spite  of  the  earnest 
intentions  of  the  blind  leaders  to  keep  out  of 
the  ditch,  and  in  spite  of  the  most  intense 
desire  of  the  blind  followers  to  be  kept  out 
of  the  ditch.  The  light  makes  possible  the 
moral  life.  The  precepts  of  the  moral  law 
are  fine  instruments,  but  they  have  only  a 
limited  application  if  there  is  not  light  enough 
in  the  sky  for  us  to  use  them.  The  Christian 
doctrine  of  God  brings  light.     The  universe 


ON   MAKING   MORALITY  HUMAN        165 

may  not  be  all  that  men  have  claimed  for  it 
in  relation  to  human  needs.  We  may  pos- 
sibly some  day  find,  for  example,  that  the 
world  has  other  purposes  than  merely  those 
which  have  to  do  with  human  inteUigences, 
but  anyhow  the  world  is  usable  by  us  and  we 
can  feel  at  home  here.  The  revelation  of  the 
Christian  religion  shows  us  that  the  world 
belongs  to  our  Father  and  that  the  earthly 
part  of  the  world  is  one  of  the  many  man- 
sions of  the  Father's  house.  God  is  a  moral 
being,  and  our  moral  insights  are  but  gleams 
of  the  light  and  hfe  which  are  in  Him. 

President  Eliot  of  Harvard  once  said  that 
the  first  step  in  the  moral  development  of 
children  in  a  well-ordered  home  is  to  get  the 
children  to  respect  the  father  of  the  family. 
Respect  should  always  underlie  love.  The 
Christian  doctrine  of  God  creates  respect  for 
God.  This  world  is  not  altogether  a  nursery. 
It  is  a  place  where  many  of  the  children  of 
God  are  beyond  the  nursery  stage,  and  de- 
mand justice  and  righteousness  in  God's 
nature,  as  well  as  love.  The  revelation  in 
Jesus  is  a  pledge  that  the  moral  obligations 
which  are  binding  on  us  are  binding  also  on 
God.  God  is  under  the  heaviest  of  bonds, 
— which  He  has  had  no  desire  to  escape. 
There  is  suggestiveness  in  the  remark  of  an 


l66  PERSONAL  CHRISTIANITY 

old  saint  who  once  declared  that  the  revela- 
tion of  the  divine  purpose  in  Christ  is  neces- 
sary to  satisfy  God's  own  self-respect.  The 
remark  may  be  a  trifle  overbold,  but  few 
reverent  remarks  of  this  sort  are  likely  to  be 
overbold.  As  soon  as  there  are  prophets  or 
seers  who  can  glimpse  anything  of  the  moral 
purpose  of  God  it  would  seem  that  God  is 
under  obligation  to  let  them  know  His  pur- 
pose. If  there  were  no  other  persons  beside 
God  Himself  that  would  create  one  sort  of 
moral  problem.  God  would  then  be  under 
obligation  only  to  those  moral  laws  which 
express  His  own  inner  nature,  in  other  words, 
only  to  Himself.  But  the  moment  other  be- 
ings of  moral  intelligence  are  brought  into 
existence  the  Creator  is  under  obligation  to 
come  into  moral  communion  with  them.  He 
cannot  stand  aloof  and  refuse  to  do  this  and 
maintain  His  own  self-respect.  Why  did  the 
saint  say  this  ?  Because  he  knew  that  a  man 
could  not  give  himself  to  such  a  refusal  and 
maintain  his  self-respect,  and  self-respect 
must  mean  more  to  God  than  to  man.  The 
Christian  revelation  is  of  a  God  whom  we 
can  respect  and  trust.  There  is  no  hard-and- 
fast  proof  of  the  existence  of  this  God,  and 
this  is  what  the  moralist  may  have  in  mind 
when  he  says  that  strict  morality  cannot  go 


ON   MAKING   MORALITY   HUMAN        167 

outside  the  realm  of  the  actually  known.  He 
declares  that  strict  uprightness  cannot  delude 
itself  or  bolster  itself  up  with  beliefs  just  be- 
cause their  consequences  happen  to  be  bene- 
ficial. 

Abstract  righteousness  is  never  more  dis- 
tressingly unhuman  than  when  it  climbs  into 
this  lofty  attitude ;  and  from  an  unhuman 
position  it  often  leaps  over  to  an  inhuman 
one.  *'  We  must  be  absolutely  honest,"  de- 
clares the  abstract  moralist.  And  indeed  we 
must.  But  we  must  not  fancy  ourselves 
honest  when  we  spill  all  the  human  values 
out  of  life.  There  was  once  a  very  small  boy 
who  when  asked  the  time  of  day  never  felt 
that  he  could  reply  that  it  was  ten  minutes 
past  twelve,  or  any  other  exact  minute,  be- 
cause the  hands  were  moving,  and  that 
therefore  he  could  not  honestly  say  that  they 
were  at  any  one  place.  The  boy  would  reply 
that  the  hands  were  passing  from  such  figures 
to  such  other  figures.  Though  this  boy  ac- 
tually lived  on  earth  he  was  hardly  human. 
A  normal  human  being  is  satisfied  if  he  is 
understood  in  his  intended  meaning,  for 
language  is  an  instrument  and  as  such  has 
communication  of  thought  for  its  purpose. 
The  abstract  moralist  who  believes  in  mo- 
rality on  its  own  account  and  declares  against 


l68  PERSONAL  CHRISTIANITY 

the  dishonesty  of  holding  fast  to  beliefs  in 
God  which  we  cannot  prove  will  never  do 
much  for  the  cause  of  any  type  of  morality. 
If  we  made  claims  for  Christian  belief  differ- 
ent from  those  we  do  make  the  case  might 
be  different.  The  present  lecturer  cannot  be 
persuaded  that  the  Christian  is  not  honest 
when  he  makes  the  frankest  distinction  be- 
tween what  is  known  as  objective  fact  and 
what  is  assumed  on  faith.  In  the  Christian 
doctrine  of  God  we  are  admittedly  in  the 
realm  of  belief.  We  avow  as  heartily  as  did 
Kant  that  there  is  no  formal  reasoning  which 
will  give  the  God  of  Christianity  as  the  con- 
clusion, to  be  known  as  we  know  that  the 
square  of  the  hypothenuse  of  a  right-angled 
triangle  is  equal  to  the  sum  of  the  squares  of 
the  other  two  sides.  We  would  remind  the 
abstract  and  highly  honest  moralist  that  all 
the  truths  which  can  be  known  in  this  strictly 
logical  procedure  are  about  as  momentous  as 
this  mathematical  proposition.  We  refuse  to 
be  put  at  a  disadvantage  by  this  objection 
that  our  religious  knowledge  is  not  strict 
knowledge  in  a  w^orld  where  we  cannot  get 
anywhere  without  assumptions.  After  having 
made  our  assumptions  we  affirm  that  the  idea 
of  God  thus  assumed  does  satisfy  our  total 
life  better  than  anything  else  we  have  ever 


ON   MAKING   MORALITY   HUMAN        169 

found, — it  satisfies  intellectual  and  emotional 
and  volitional  demands.  We  ought  to  be 
competent  witnesses  as  to  whether  our  de- 
mands are  satisfied  or  not.  So  where  does 
the  dishonesty  come  in,  except  that  we  use 
the  word  ''  knowledge "  when  the  moralist 
thinks  we  ought  not  ?  We  use  **  knowledge  " 
in  the  sense  of  faith  experience  ;  and  in  ordi- 
nary human  speech  such  use  is  permissible 
if  anything  is.  We  are  pointing  out  the  only 
normal  dynamic.  We  say  that  the  light  on 
morality  comes  from  belief  in  God, — not 
scientifically  demonstrable  or  logically  de- 
ducible  knowledge  of  God  ;  and  we  point  to 
the  Christian  community  of  persons  as  them- 
selves proof  of  the  justice  of  our  belief.  If 
we  find  that  believing  men  become  better 
men,  better  fathers  and  brothers  and  sons 
and  husbands,  better  citizens,  better  members 
of  the  commonwealth,  we  declare  that  this  is 
precisely  the  result  at  which  we  are  aiming, 
and  we  hold  fast  the  beliefs  as  aids  to  this 
Tightness  of  conduct.  We  would  not  go  so 
far  as  to  attempt  to  explain  the  results  of  be- 
lief in  detail  on  this  or  that  individual,  but  we 
do  maintain  that  on  the  whole  and  in  the 
main  this  is  the  result  which  follows  sincere 
entrance  into  the  body  of  Christian  believers. 
As  instruments  Christian  beliefs  are  superior 


lyo  PERSONAL  CHRISTIANITY 

to  the  formal  precepts  of  abstract  morality. 
If  there  is  any  risk  in  accepting  the  funda- 
mental beliefs  of  Christianity  we  are  willing 
to  run  the  risk. 

Much  follows  as  implication  from  the  Chris- 
tian doctrine  of  God.  The  universe  must  be 
under  a  law  substantially  moral.  Moreover 
if  men  are  sons  of  God  the  confidence  in 
immortality  becomes  at  once  potent  in  Chris- 
tian circles.  And  now  again  the  formal 
moralist  breaks  out  upon  us  because  we 
bring  in  immortality  to  bedim  the  pure  moral 
motives  of  men.  The  moralist  will  have  it 
that  men  cannot  be  moral  when  they  are 
looking  for  pay  for  their  virtue.  In  quoting 
thus  from  abstract  moralists  we  are  not  quot- 
ing from  straw  men  to  whom  we  are  attribut- 
ing ready-made  objections  which  we  proceed 
to  knock  over.  Men, — and  famous  men  too, 
— have  actually  urged  and  are  urging  this 
type  of  objection.  It  is  an  interesting  com- 
mentary on  the  moral  state  of  some  of  these 
moralists  that  they  can  refer  to  life  in  terms 
of  pay  or  reward  when  they  find  the  desire 
for  immortality  so  especially  selfish.  If  the 
main  current  of  life  here  is  selfish  there  could 
be  legitimate  objection  against  continuing 
the  opportunity  for  selfishness,  but  even  the 
most  detached  of  closet  reasoners  must  surely 


ON   MAKING   MORALITY   HUMAN        171 

have  seen  the  unselfishness  of  much  life ; 
they  must  have  seen  men  delighting  to  serve 
and  asking  for  a  chance  to  serve  forever.  In 
what  sense  it  is  selfish  to  long  for  a  chance  to 
work  for  the  highest  and  best  forever  does 
not  appear.  By  the  way,  if  the  honest  ab- 
stract moralist  wants  to  be  absolutely  honest 
let  him  cease  claiming  impersonal  immortality 
as  immortality.  The  abstract  moralist  avows 
that  he  believes  in  immortality,  but  not 
personal  immortality.  The  influence  or  the 
value  of  our  lives  is  immortal.  But  im- 
personal immortality  is  not  what  ordinary 
speech  means  by  immortality. 

The  desire  for  immortality  is  the  desire  to 
claim  the  whole  universe  as  the  moral  sphere, 
to  insist  that  God  has  righteous  purposes  for 
men  which  stretch  beyond  this  present  life,  to 
offset  the  ironies  and  mockeries  of  earthly 
existence  not  so  much  by  punishing  some 
people  and  rewarding  others  in  a  spectacular 
readjustment  as  by  vindicating  and  satisfying 
the  instinct  of  the  normal  conscience  for 
justice.  The  hard  lot  of  this  or  that  man 
may  not  count  much  with  the  sufferer  him- 
self. He  may  have  made  a  stoic  adjustment 
to  it  so  that  the  hardship  has  ceased  to 
trouble  him,  but  the  moral  bystanders  are 
not  satisfied  that  any  life  should  be  unjustly 


172  PERSONAL  CHRISTIANITY 

treated  forever.  And  these  bystanders  have 
some  rights.  We  desire  to  live  in  a  world 
where  righteous  law  rules  throughout.  We 
are  like  the  spectators  of  a  play  or  the  readers 
of  a  novel.  We  wish  the  plot  to  "  end  right." 
We  are  not  happy  with  a  poor  ending.  The 
characters  portrayed  are  not  the  only  ones 
concerned.  We  onlookers  are  concerned. 
Our  sense  of  fitness  demands  some  con- 
sideration ;  and  so  we  wish  the  universe  to 
end  right.  We  can  work  better  with  the 
expectation  of  the  right  ending.  If  some  one 
convinces  us  that  there  is  no  immortality  for 
men  we  shall  give  up  the  belief,  but  until 
thus  convinced  we  shall  hold  fast  to  the 
belief.     The  belief  morally  agrees  with  us. 

A  foremost  abstract  moralist  once  burst  out 
with  contemptuous  impatience  on  John  Henry 
Newman  on  account  of  Newman's  ability  to 
persuade  himself  of  the  truth  of  religious 
beliefs  because  of  their  beneficial  results. 
Newman's  capacity  for  belief  seemed  to  out- 
rage this  strict  moralist,  but  the  comment  of 
the  critic  would  seem  to  show  scant  insight 
into  the  process  by  which  men  attain  to 
spiritual  certainty.  Moralists  of  a  type  seem 
to  cling  fast  to  their  creeds  because  of  the 
very  disagreeableness  of  the  beliefs,  or  un- 
beliefs.    We  find  a  saint  now  and  then  who 


ON   MAKING  MORALITY   HUMAN        1 73 

seems  to  imagine  that  the  more  disagreeable 
a  call  to  duty  the  more  surely  it  must  be 
from  God.  So  with  some  teachers  of 
morality.  The  less  of  human  value  there 
seems  to  be  in  their  systems  the  more  the 
adherents  seem  to  prize  them.  It  is  at  least 
as  rational  to  accept  beliefs  because  they 
make  us  contented  as  to  accept  them  because 
they  make  us  miserable.  The  abstract 
moralist  is  of  all  men  most  impotent  when 
asked  to  suggest  a  dynamic  for  the  enforce- 
ment of  actual  morality.  When  the  dis- 
tinguished moralist  to  whom  we  have  referred 
as  criticizing  Newman  himself  became 
alarmed  at  the  spread  of  lawlessness  in  this 
country  he  made  the  suggestion  that  singing 
be  more  widely  taught  in  the  public  schools, 
since  singing  has  obviously  a  soothing  and 
tranquillizing  effect ! 

We  come  back  to  our  avowal  that  in  mak- 
ing morality  vigorous  we  must  put  a  sky 
over  human  life  in  the  form  of  teaching 
about  God  and  man.  If  men  are  sons  of 
God  the  whole  problem  of  duty  towards  our 
fellows  pushes  into  new  force  at  once.  Since 
we  are  under  obligations  to  be  kind  even  to 
the  beasts  of  the  field  no  doubt  we  ought  to 
be  kind  to  men  even  if  their  career  is  to  be 
as  short  as  that  of  the  beasts  ;  but  human 


174  PERSONAL  CHRISTIANITY 

kindness  is  one  duty  if  it  is  just  an  attempt 
to  meet  the  commoner  needs  of  men,  and 
quite  another  if  it  is  an  effort  to  call  forth 
the  transcendent  dignity  attaching  to  men  as 
at  least  possible  sons  of  God.  The  con- 
demnations of  Jesus  were  for  the  inhuman 
who  were  inhuman  just  in  overlooking  op- 
portunities to  be  human.  Dives  may  have 
been  a  pretty  good  sort  of  fellow.  He  may 
have  been  an  agreeable  companion  and  a 
hospitable  entertainer,  but  he  overlooked 
responsibility  to  Lazarus.  Dives  in  the  sec- 
ond part  of  the  Master's  picture  is  about  the 
same  man  as  in  the  first.  Very  anxious 
that  his  brothers  should  not  come  into  the 
place  of  torment,  and  very  willing  that  Laz- 
arus should  be  treated  just  as  a  convenience 
to  carry  water  to  him  and  to  go  and  warn 
the  brothers  of  their  danger  !  The  persons 
condemned  in  the  Master's  picture  of  judg- 
ment were  not  those  we  usually  pronounce 
bad.  No  violent  offenders  are  in  the  list, 
but  those  who  have  not  treated  men  as  men 
come  under  condemnation.  What  is  God  ? 
The  answer  carries  with  it  the  answer  to, 
what  is  man  ? — and  what  is  human  life  ? 
With  some  light  on  these  questions  we  take 
a  long  stride  towards  a  dynamic  for  mo- 
rality. 


ON   MAKING   MORALITY   HUMAN        1 75 

But  we  remind  ourselves  that  we  ourselves 
have  been  teaching  that  light  is  not  enough. 
Light  is  the  indispensable  prerequisite,  but 
men  can  stand  in  the  full  light  and  not  move 
towards  the  moral  life.  We  must  have  an 
appeal  which  stirs  the  heart.  Emotion  which 
is  sheer  effervescence  is  nothing ;  but  emo- 
tion which  bursts  out  of  ideas  and  impels  to 
action  is  everything.  Feeling  which  comes 
with  the  full  light  and  which  acts  in  the  light 
is  full  of  might. 

The  revelation  in  the  cross  of  Christ  has 
always  appealed  to  the  heart  of  man.  An 
experience  most  apt  to  arouse  us  to  repent- 
ant gratitude  is  to  become  aware  of  some 
one's  patience  towards  us  in  spite  of  our  own 
waywardness  and  wickedness.  In  one  de- 
gree or  another  the  cross  makes  us  realize 
our  cost  to  God  and  our  debt  to  Him.  The 
love  of  God  for  us  is  laid  bare.  The  Son  of 
God  will  meet  the  death  of  the  cross  to 
show  us  how  far  He  will  go  in  holy  love  for 
us.  We  must  never  cease  to  remember  that 
all  theories  of  the  atonement  are  so  many 
attempts  on  the  part  of  successive  genera- 
tions to  say  that  God  has  done  whatever 
must  be  done  to  win  us.  God  has  done  all 
that  He  can  do.  Whatever  our  theory,  or 
whether  we  have  any  theory  or  not,  this  is 


176  PERSONAL  CHRISTIANITY 

the  aspect  of  the  cross  on  which  we  agree, — 
that  we  have  here  the  revelation  of  God's 
willingness  to  do  all  He  can  for  us.  Then 
our  moral  desire  is  aroused  to  do  all  we  can 
for  the  sake  of  Christ.  "  For  the  sake  of 
Christ "  is  on  some  lips  a  cant  phrase  but  it 
has  in  it  the  secret  of  Christian  effectiveness. 
We  take  upon  ourselves  His  cross  because 
it  is  His  cross.  The  dynamic  is  especially 
powerful  when  we  are  face  to  face  with  the 
obligation  to  help  some  men  as  they  actually 
are,  for  men  are  not  always  attractive  in 
themselves,  even  though  we  are  labouring  for 
them  because  of  what  they  are  and  may  be- 
come. Suppose  we  take  unqualifiedly  the 
dictum  that  we  are  to  sacrifice  ourselves  for 
men  just  because  of  what  men  are  in  them- 
selves. Looked  at  apart  from  the  Christian 
revelation  men  are  not  always  winsome  in 
themselves.  We  say  of  them  that  they  have 
their  future  in  the  life  which  Christ  can  im- 
part to  them.  For  the  sake  of  Christ,  and 
of  the  vision  of  men  which  He  gives  us,  we 
move  forward  undismayed  by  men  as  we 
here  and  now  find  them.  The  practice  of 
self-sacrificing  morality  becomes  rather  cheer- 
less if  it  does  not  base  itself  on  the  view 
which  Christ  took  of  men  and  on  the  cross 
which  He  was  willing  to  carry  for  their  sake. 


ON  MAKING  MORALITY  HUMAN        1 77 

But  there  is  more  still  in  the  Christian 
dynamic,  considered  merely  as  centre  and 
source  of  power.  There  is  that  belief  in  the 
Spirit  of  God  as  the  Helper  that  sustains  the 
members  of  the  Christian  community  as  they 
in  their  turn  strive  to  help  men.  The  Spirit 
is  indeed  the  Helper.  Men  need  to  be  reas- 
sured that  their  blunders  are  not  fatal ;  that 
if  they  fall,  they-  can  get  up  and  stumble  on  ; 
that  in  time  of  stress  they  can  feel  their 
powers  reenforced  from  within.  Here  we 
are  in  the  realm  of  a  fact  as  scientific  as  any 
which  the  laboratory  affords.  The  members 
of  the  kingdom  of  God  may  be  mistaken  as 
to  the  assumptions  on  which  they  pray,  but 
they  can  hardly  be  mistaken  as  to  whether 
they  get  help  from  prayer  or  not.  The  most 
saintly  among  them  say  that  they  would  soon 
be  lost  in  the  moral  struggle  if  it  were  not 
for  the  reenforcement  in  prayer. 

The  fact  that  many  well-meaning  persons 
think  they  get  on  smoothly  enough  without 
prayer  is  not  a  suf^cient  rejoinder  to  the 
Christian's  claim  that  he  is  helped  in  prayer. 
Many  persons  get  on  after  a  fashion  without 
living  up  to  hygienic  or  sanitary  laws,  be- 
cause they  do  not  know  what  life  would  be 
if  they  lived  more  in  accordance  with  those 
laws.     Many  ignorant  persons  say  that  they 


1 78  PERSONAL  CHRISTIANITY 

get  on  well  enough  without  books, — simply 
because  they  do  not  know  what  is  inside  of 
books.  The  higher  the  life  rises  the  greater 
the  need  of  prayer  to  maintain  that  balance 
and  poise  which  mark  lofty  saintliness. 
Some  Bible  readers  cannot  understand  the 
temptations  of  Jesus,  for  example,  simply  be- 
cause those  temptations  move  in  so  rare  an 
altitude.  The  temptation  to  surrender  to  a 
gross  bodily  appetite  is  intelligible  enough 
to  all,  but  not  so  the  temptation  to  seek  a 
short  cut  to  win  the  mind  of  the  nation.  To 
steady  Himself  in  the  heights  where  He  lived 
Jesus  avowed  His  dependence  upon  prayer. 
Moreover  the  worker  for  the  relief  of  men 
needs  reenforcement  against  the  moral  wear 
and  tear  that  come  in  the  process  of  the 
moral  work  itself.  It  is  possible  for  a  man 
to  be  morally  worn  out  in  the  very  perform- 
ance of  Christian  duty.  There  is  a  tendency 
to  fall  away  from  the  ideal,  to  yield  to  the 
spirit  of  compromise,  to  become  lost  in  the 
details  and  to  forget  the  personal  and  spir- 
itual aim  of  the  work.  And  there  are  subtle 
considerations  entering  into  the  achievement 
of  the  highest  morality  which  escape  the  eye- 
sight of  the  coarser-grained.  There  is  an 
element  of  timeliness  in  Christian  effort  which 
requires  a  keen  moral  discernment.     Some 


ON.  MAKING   MORALITY   HUMAN        1 79 

duties  are  duties  just  for  a  fleeting  instant. 
The  word  is  to  be  spoken  or  the  deed  done 
just  now,  if  it  is  to  have  moral  value.  Or 
the  problem  of  the  wise  placing  of  the  life 
activity  is  before  one  who  wishes  to  make 
the  life  count  for  the  most.  Or  there  is  the 
problem  of  the  true  Christian  manner.  Some 
deeds  must  be  done  in  just  the  right  manner 
to  have  value.  Jesus  said  :  "  Take  heed  how 
ye  hear."  '*  After  this  manner^  pray  ye." 
These  are  the  fine  considerations  on  which 
light  breaks  only  for  him  whose  intuitions 
are  continually  subject  to  the  inflow  of  the 
life  from  belief  in  a  personal  Father  in 
heaven. 

And  how  much  greater  the  need  in  the 
lives  of  those  who  have  been  bound  with 
sin  ?  What  can  abstract  moral  principles  do 
with  the  man  who  has  been  literally  reared 
in  sin, — in  that  he  has  been  surrounded  by 
evil  conditions  from  birth  ?  For  such  a  man 
especially,  *'  ethical  culture "  without  refer- 
ence to  change  in  the  inner  purpose  by  spir- 
itual purification  and  reenforcement  is  lam- 
entably inadequate.  With  those  whose 
moral  experience  is  conventional  routine 
there  may  be  no  deep  feeling  of  contrite 
need.  Some  persons  are  held  to  a  measure 
of  moral  life  by  the  conventional  morality 


l8o  PERSONAL  CHRISTIANITY 

around  them.  They  act  about  as  their 
neighbours  do, — and  that  satisfies  all  their 
demands.  But  **  ethical  culture "  goes  to 
pieces  in  any  heartrending  spiritual  crisis. 
Suppose  the  Salvation  Army  should  throw 
aside  the  Gospel  for  the  abstract  precepts  of 
moral  culture.  It  is  the  aim  of  the  Salvation 
Army  to  make  men  better  morally, — espe- 
cially in  the  commoner  moralities.  The  Sal- 
vation Army  could  well  afford  to  let  its  ap- 
peal for  approval  of  the  community  rest  on 
what  it  has  done  for  the  actual  improvement 
of  particular  persons,  but  imagine  the  Salva- 
tion Army  soldier  talking  to  the  dazed  wretch 
in  the  gutter  about  moral  precepts  alone. 
There  is  needed  the  inrush  of  a  new  life. 

Once  more  the  moralist  breaks  out  that 
such  doctrine  interferes  with  a  man's  moral 
freedom,  that  such  sentimental  religion  creates 
a  fierce  psychological  and  emotional  storm 
which  sweeps  everything  before  it  but  which 
cannot  be  fundamentally  moral.  We  may 
be  permitted  to  dismiss  this  objection  in 
view  of  the  fact  that  the  reformed  man  him- 
self interprets  the  experience  in  personal 
terms.  The  new  life  which  has  rushed  in 
upon  him  he  believes  to  be  the  love  of  a 
Person  who  cares  for  him  ;  and  his  obliga- 
tion towards  that  Person  is  a  personal  debt. 


ON   MAKING   MORALITY  HUMAN        l8l 

The  Christian  Church  must  freshen  the 
moral  field.  That  field,  at  least  in  its  theory, 
is  Hke  a  tract  of  earth  which  has  the  proper 
soil  constituents  but  which  lacks  just  one 
requisite, — water.  The  rains  must  fall,  or  the 
rivers  must  be  carried  to  the  dry  acres. 
Christianity  does  not  add  greatly  to  the  list 
of  moral  precepts.  The  ethics  of  Christian- 
ity are  not  so  very  different  from  the  ethics 
of  some  other  systems,  but  Christianity  can 
irrigate  the  ethical  soil.  She  does  so  in  the 
personal  methods  which  we  have  been  at- 
tempting to  describe.  And  Christianity 
must  succeed  at  this.  Failure  here  is  fatal. 
We  know  how  deadly  becomes  the  criticism 
directed  towards  a  church  organization  when 
it  appears  that  the  organization  itself  is  get- 
ting away  from  the  path  of  rectitude  through 
concessions  to  the  spirit  of  the  world.  The 
invisible  body  of  true  believers  may  always 
be  moral  but  the  organization  of  this  or  that 
sect  may  be  tainted.  Having  care  for  her 
own  life  it  is  the  duty  of  the  Church  to  bring 
moral  life  to  the  world,  to  teach  that  all 
phases  of  experience  must  be  made  subordi- 
nate to  the  law  of  good  will,  to  proclaim  a 
moral  love  which  is  for  the  last  man.  More 
and  more  acts  are  to  be  brought  within  the 
scope  of  moral  duty.     More  and  more  per- 


l82  PERSONAL  CHRISTIANITY 

sons  are  to  be  reached  with  good  will.  More 
and  more  even  the  instincts  and  desires  are 
to  be  trained  towards  the  highest  expressions 
as  second  nature,  and  so  far  as  possible  as 
first  nature.  But  always,  always,  always  the 
Church  is  to  remember  that  morality  is  to  be 
stated  in  human  terms.  Out  of  human  lives 
are  to  flow  the  streams  of  living  waters 
which  are  to  irrigate  the  precepts  and  the 
laws  and  the  systems  in  which  men  record 
their  moral  insights.  And  the  systems  are 
never  to  be  made  ends  in  themselves.  If 
they  are  outgrown  by  the  uprush  of  the  life 
of  righteous  persons  they  are  to  be  amended 
or  supplanted.  In  every  case  and  at  all 
times  they  are  to  be  looked  upon  just  as  the 
instruments  by  which  the  growing  life  of  the 
persons  of  the  Christian  community  is  helped 
towards  completer  humanity.  The  persons 
are  to  move  freely  among  the  systems  and 
quicken  them  into  fruitfulness  and  fragrance 
by  the  freshness  of  life  itself. 


LECTURE  V 

ENDS  AND  MEANS  IN 
SOCIAL  ENDEAVOUR 


LECTURE  V 

ENDS  AND  MEANS  IN  SOCIAL 
ENDEAVOUR 

WE  have  been  careful  not  to  speak 
of  society  as  if  it  were  literally  an 
organism,  but  we  must  reckon 
with  the  truth  in  the  figurative  characteri- 
zation of  society  as  an  organism.  The 
actual  fact  is  persons  existing  together, — 
and  we  doubt  as  to  whether  persons  could 
be  persons  and  exist  apart  from  one  another. 
We  are  not  instruments  of  one  another :  we 
have  studiously  avoided  speaking  of  persons 
as  if  they  were  instruments.  We  are  more 
nearly  parts  of  one  another,  though  without 
merging  into  one  greater  self  with  conscious- 
ness of  its  own.  This  mutual  interdepend- 
ence is  as  much  a  fact  as  is  the  separateness 
of  the  individual.  We  say  that  around  each 
self  stretches  the  "  unplumbed,  salt,  estrang- 
ing sea,"  and  we  all  know  how  justly  the  poet 
sings.  We  think  of  ourselves  as  islands  cut 
ofE  from  one  another  by  deep  abysses,  or  as 
185 


1 86  PERSONAL  CHRISTIANITY 

spheres  thrown  together  touching  one  an- 
other only  at  points.  But  we  must  not  so 
exaggerate  this  isolation  as  to  forget  that 
the  sea  however  deep  and  salt  is  navigable, 
and  that  at  the  points  where  the  spheres  do 
touch  there  can  be  much  interchange.  The 
hermit  withdraws  from  society  to  live  alone, 
but  he  carries  on  his  meditations  in  language 
taught  him  by  society, — language  which  is 
a  purely  social  creation  and  instrument. 
The  cynic  rails  at  society, — with  society, 
through  its  faults,  more  before  his  gaze  than 
anything  else.  Men  never  have  lived  apart 
as  solitary  individuals ;  and  it  is  increasingly 
certain  that  they  never  will.  We  are  mem- 
bers one  of  another.  It  has  always  been  so, 
and  it  will  always  be  so. 

Now  out  of  these  social  cohesions  come 
diversified  instrumental  creations.  We  have 
seen  that  the  basal  fact  in  the  family  is  the 
cohering  group  itself, — father, — mother, — 
child.  Dealing  wath  this  group  we  have 
agreements  governing  marriage  and  child-life 
which  express  formally  the  ideals  as  to  the 
family.  These  are  instruments  for  the  control 
of  the  family  relation.  There  are  other 
social  facts,  such  as  coalitions  into  religious 
and  political  and  industrial  and  state  and 
national   units.     The   fundamental   in  every 


ENDS  AND   MEANS  187 

coalition  is  the  individuals  with  their  mutual 
affinities.  We  are  not  just  now  to  discuss 
the  foundations  of  political  science  but  we  find 
around  us  commonwealths  and  nations  whose 
laws  govern  these  widest  provinces  of  social 
activity  themselves  and  in  greater  or  less 
degree  control  all  other  groups  within  their 
borders.  Just  what  is  the  constructive  factor 
in  nationality  we  do  not  pretend  even  to 
guess.  Of  course  the  bottom  truth  is  the 
united  group  of  individuals  but  how  much  is 
natural  and  normal  in  a  given  nationality 
and  how  much  artificial  and  accidental  ? 
Enough  now  to  recognize  the  fact  of  com- 
monwealths and  to  proceed  to  discuss  the 
relation  of  Christianity  to  the  wider  social 
activities.  We  are  thinking  of  nations  some- 
what like  our  own,  where  there  has  been  at 
least  measurable  progress  towards  democracy, 
where  the  ultimate  authority  is  through  one 
organ  of  expression  or  another  the  authority 
of  the  people  themselves.  Democracy  can 
work  even  through  monarchical  framework, 
— as  in  England.  Taking  national  groups, 
or  groups  which  we  call  the  states  of  a 
federation,  we  try  to  hint  what  Christianity 
should  attempt  in  the  shaping  of  the  forces 
which  make  for  general  social  advance  in 
such  groups.     Especially  are  we  inquiring  as 


l88  PERSONAL  CHRISTIANITY 

to  the  possibilities  of  suggestion  along  the 
path  most  explored  to-day,  the  path  of  society 
towards  larger  industrial  control.  We  need 
not  remark  that  our  discussions  are  simply 
for  purposes  of  illustration  by  one  who  can- 
not lay  claim  to  special  and  technical  infor- 
mation, but  who  draws  upon  knowledge 
common  to  all  to  set  forth  general  principles. 
Industry  seems  especially  apt  for  illustration 
because  industrial  problems  are  just  now  so 
much  before  the  states  and  nations  and 
because  the  earning  of  livelihood  is  so 
inherently  important  as  demanding  the 
largest  division  of  the  time  and  effort  of  the 
average  man. 

In  spite  of  all  this,  however,  we  may  en- 
counter the  impatient  glances  of  many  who 
declare  that  the  religious  teachers  should 
keep  out  of  this  province,  that  the  pure  gospel 
is  a  gospel  for  the  individual,  and  that  the 
only  plan  for  social  regeneration  is  to  labour 
for  the  regeneration  of  individuals.  To  all  of 
which  we  subscribe, — but  we  see  no  prohibi- 
tion here  for  those  who  declare  the  duties  of 
Christianity  in  the  social  activities.  The  laws 
of  society  are  the  instruments  through  which 
society  works.  Though  all  depends  on  the 
man  behind  the  instrument,  that  man  cannot 
do  much  with  the  instrument  unless  he  knows 


ENDS   AND   MEANS  I89 

something  about  it  and  the  purpose  of  its 
creation.  Good  intentions  are  not  enough ; 
study  of  the  social  tools  is  indispensable. 
Instruments  aside,  however,  for  the  present, — 
our  modern  understanding  is  that  an  agent 
is  wherever  he  ac^s.  The  theologian  tells  us 
that  the  omnipresence  of  God  means  that  God 
is  acting  upon  all  parts  of  the  universe,  and 
is  where  He  acts.  However  it  may  be  with 
God  we  can  see  that  a  man  is  where  he  acts, 
and  that  he  is  responsible  for  his  activities  at 
their  farther  ends.  I  shoot  an  arrow  in  the 
air  and  it  falls  to  earth  I  know  not  where,  but 
if  it  strikes  any  one  in  its  fall  the  consequences 
may  be  prosaically  unromantic  for  me,  for  I 
am  responsible.  I,  so  far  as  concerns  moral 
merit  and  demerit,  am  where  my  activity 
reaches.  I  may  sit  in  the  pew  and  pray  for 
the  conquest  of  all  parts  of  my  nature  by  the 
spirit  of  the  Lord,  and  I  do  well ;  but  I  must 
not  forget  that  the  large  part  of  the  answer 
can  only  be  the  Christianization  of  my  acts 
towards  those  whom  I  meet  in  my  daily 
occupation.  If  the  earning  of  my  living 
consumes  the  major  part  of  my  time  six  days 
in  the  week  the  chances  are  that  the  chief 
opportunity  for  my  personal  sanctification 
will  lie  in  those  six  days.  We  seek  of  course 
the  transformation  of  the  world  by  a  trans- 


I90  PERSONAL  CHRISTIANITY 

formation  of  the  individuals  in  the  world  but 
we  are  not  so  foolish  as  to  imagine  that  these 
transformations  can  be  wrought  by  spiritual 
exercises  which  touch  only  a  fraction  and  that 
a  small  fraction  of  the  doings  of  the  individual. 
There  is  something  worth  thinking  about  in 
the  homely  axiom  that  when  you  get  a  man's 
money  you  come  near  getting  the  man,  and 
the  observation  may  not  be  at  all  cynical. 
The  most  of  the  ordinary  man's  mental  effort 
is  in  the  making  of  the  money  ;  the  most 
significant  stress  of  his  moral  endeavour  is 
there.  If  we  are  to  neglect  this  sphere  of  the 
individual's  activities  it  would  hardly  seem 
serious  to  pay  attention  to  anything  else. 
We  repeat  our  bit  of  metaphysics  that  a  man 
is  where  he  acts  and  we  avow  our  belief  that 
Christianity  must  touch  all  his  acts. 

And  now  another  objector  reminds  us  that 
we  cannot  reform  men  from  the  outside.  He 
would  have  us  treat  this  problem  thoroughly 
by  digging  deep  down  within  men's  souls. 
We  protest  that  we  are  doing  our  utmost  to 
press  this  entire  debate  into  the  inner  realm. 
But  when  our  friend  tells  us  that  we  cannot 
change  men  by  changes  outside  of  them,  we 
beg  leave  to  amend.  All  depends  on  what  is 
outside  of  them.  The  material  environment 
may  be  the  chief  outside  factor,  in  which  the 


ENDS   AND   MEANS  I9I 

chances  for  inner  change  of  the  man  living 
under  the  domination  of  the  environment 
may  be  good  or  may  not  be.  We  remark  in 
passing  that  some  men  do  not  have  very 
great  chance  to  be  good  in  the  material  cir- 
cumstances in  which  they  are  placed  and  that 
if  they  could  have  change  of  circumstances 
their  moral  prospects  would  mightily  im- 
prove. This  aside,  however.  What  is  most 
potent  outside  of  the  man  whom  we  wish  to 
transform  may  be  another  man  or  other  men. 
It  may  be  that  his  employer  is  the  irresistible 
feature  of  his  environment  and  that  his  em- 
ployer is  unjust.  It  may  be  that  those  with 
whom  he  daily  associates  are  the  forces  out- 
side of  him  that  keep  him  down.  It  may  be 
too  that  some  of  these  outside  persons  are 
within  hearing  of  the  gospel  of  industrial 
Christianity  and  by  change  of  inner  spirit 
these  environmental  persons  may  take  the 
first  step  towards  inwardly  transforming  the 
man  whose  activities  they  so  influence.  So 
we  shall  try  to  hold  fast  to  the  personal  and 
inner  aim. 

Now  as  to  the  laws  of  a  social  group. 
Men  living  together  in  groups  have  to  make 
instruments  which  we  call  laws.  These  laws 
are  unmistakably  the  artificial  creations 
through  which  the  group  works.     The  laws 


192  PERSONAL  CHRISTIANITY 

have  tool  sacredness, — that  is  to  say,  they 
are  valuable  for  what  they  can  do  and  are  to 
be  regarded  by  men  as  sacred.  But  they  are 
never  to  be  hoisted  to  a  pedestal  to  be  wor- 
shipped as  if  they  were  ends  in  themselves. 
And  their  importance,  vast  as  it  is,  is  not  to 
be  overestimated.  All  this  seems  so  obvious 
as  to  require  apology  for  uttering  it,  until  we 
begin  to  cast  about  to  discover  what  is  the 
actual  situation.  Then  we  find  two  ex- 
tremes,— an  extreme  of  lawlessness  on  the 
one  hand  and  of  idolatry  of  law  on  the 
other.  At  one  extreme  are  men  in  rebellion 
against  all  law.  At  the  other  are  those  who 
speak  of  law  as  if  it  were  above  all  things 
else  holy. 

The  Christian  view  lies  between  these  ex- 
tremes. Laws  are  instruments  and  not  ends 
in  themselves.  The  only  ends  in  themselves 
in  a  society  of  persons  are  the  persons. 
Christianity  stands  against  that  lawlessness 
which  is  riot,  and  does  so  on  the  broad 
ground  that  the  persons  of  society  never  can 
prosper  until  order  reigns.  For  the  same 
reason  Christianity  stands  against  mistakenly 
sanctifying  the  law  ; — for  persons  are  sure  to 
suffer  as  soon  as  the  laws  are  lifted  up  as 
more  sacred  than  men.  There  is  altogether 
too  much  reason  to  suppose  that  in  democra- 


ENDS   AND   MEANS  193 

cies  like  ours  the  law  is  exalted  harmfully  by 
some  who  may  profit  by  such  exaltation.  It 
is  possible  for  financial  or  political  interests 
to  get  control  of  laws  for  their  own  purposes, 
and  to  fortify  themselves  behind  the  ramparts 
of  the  sacredness  of  the  law.  In  such  event 
it  is  to  be  remembered  that  the  law  is  a  tool 
and  that  much  depends  upon  who  wields  it. 
It  is  to  be  judged  by  what  it  does,  not  by 
what  its  framers  thought  it  would  do,  not  by 
what  it  once  did,  not  by  what  it  might  con- 
ceivably do  under  some  other  circumstances. 
The  entire  system  of  laws,  or  the  entire  box 
of  tools,  is  far  from  perfect  and  has  no  right 
to  honour  as  more  sacred  than  other  instru- 
ments of  social  expression.  There  is  no 
place  in  the  Christian  program  for  disorder- 
liness  but  there  is  every  place  for  the  control 
of  the  law  itself.  Society  has  to  protect  it- 
self many  times  by  throwing  a  veil  of  sacred- 
ness over  laws,  by  claiming  for  them  a  holy 
sanction  and  surrounding  them  with  awe-in- 
spiring sentiment.  But  their  sacredness  is 
the  sacredness  of  what  they  do.  No  differ- 
ence how  extensive  the  claims  for  sacredness, 
— it  is  hard  to  treat  as  sacred  an  instrument 
which  accomplishes  a  wrong  result  where  we 
looked  for  a  right  one,  or  for  an  instrument 
which  is  hopelessly  awkward  and  bungling. 


194  PERSONAL   CHRISTIANITY 

However,  injury  by  such  a  law  is  not  to  in- 
cite us  to  riot.  It  is  simply  to  incite  us  to 
better  laws.  The  cure  for  a  poor  law  is  a 
better  law. 

What  now  shall  be  the  position  of  the 
Christian  community  towards  the  laws  of  the 
community  ?  The  ideal  of  the  Church  is  to 
transform  society  not  by  instructing  society 
in  detail  as  to  what  laws  to  enact  but  by  fill- 
ing society  with  a  just  appreciation  of  the 
goal  of  all  social  endeavour.  Law  is  but  a 
social  agreement  to  act  in  a  specified  fashion. 
We  have  found  out  how  to  get  together  in 
social  activities,  and  either  through  repre- 
sentatives or  through  more  direct  agencies 
we  agree  to  act  according  to  particular  rules, 
with  the  understanding  that  the  recalcitrants 
who  will  not  thus  act  must  be  compelled  to 
act  with  us,  at  least  to  the  extent  of  not  vio- 
lating the  rule.  Towards  every  law  there 
are  probably  three  different  grades  of  re- 
lation in  a  community.  There  are  those  who 
are  morally  ahead  of  the  law.  They  do  not 
need  the  law,  any  more  than  multitudes  of 
persons  to-day  need  the  enactments  against 
murder  and  theft.  If  such  persons  were  to 
fashion  laws  at  all  they  would  legislate  in  a 
lofty  realm  which  might  not  even  be  in- 
telhgible    to    their   neighbours.     Next  there 


ENDS   AND   MEANS  195 

are  the  main  masses  for  whom  the  law  is  a 
serviceable  guide,  and  a  wholesome  agree- 
ment.    After  that  are  those  who  find  the  law 
above   them,   but  who  from  compulsion  or 
choice  nevertheless  obey  the  law.     It  is  well 
for  the  Christian  reformer  to  remember  all 
this.     Doing  so  he  will  consider  laws  as  the 
expression  of  how  far  we  can  go  or  what  sort 
of  tool  we  can  manufacture  at  a  given  date, 
and  not  as  a  final  utterance  sacred  in  itself. 
The  trouble  with  too  many  reformers  in  their 
speeches  about  imperfect  laws  is  that  they 
cannot   modulate    their    tones.     They   must 
either  keep  still  or  scream,  and  nothing  ex- 
cept an  alarm  is  ever  intelligendy  uttered  in 
a  scream.     So    the    reformers    scream   out 
against  inadequate  laws  as  if  we  who  ob- 
serve such  laws  look  upon  them  as  ultimate 
ends    in    themselves.      We    simply    regard 
them  as  the  instruments  which  we  must  use 
until  we  can  create  something  better.     Only, 
—we  are  trying  to  proceed  in  decency  and 
in  order.     While  the  Church  cannot  regulate 
the  details  of   legislation  it  is  her  duty    to 
preach  more  and  more  the  instrumentality  of 
these  social  contrivances  and  the  sacredness 
of  the  human  life  to  which  they  minister,  and 
to  live  out  into  life  a  spirit  which  will  sooner 
or  later  find  its  way  into  the  code.     Some 


196  PERSONAL  CHRISTIANITY 

ideas  are  actual  instruments  which  society 
uses  for  offense  and  defense.  Some  ideas 
are  the  wholesome  food  upon  which  the 
social  body  thrives.  Some  others  are  the 
impalpable  air  which  society  breathes.  It  is 
the  business  of  the  Church  to  work  at  the 
social  problems  from  the  top  down,  or  from 
the  bottom  up,  helping  shape  the  tools  aright, 
preaching  the  worthiest  ideas,  and  above  all 
living  into  the  social  atmosphere  the  spirit  of 
good  will. 

Here  it  may  be  well  to  speak  of  a  charge 
sometimes  brought  unjustly  against  the 
members  of  the  Christian  communion  in 
their  relation  to  admittedly  imperfect  social 
systems.  The  critic  declares  that  the  Church 
denounces  evils  in  the  present  political  or  in- 
dustrial or  social  system  and  then  accepts 
the  advantage  of  these  evil  conditions  her- 
self,— that  if  the  Church  is  sincere  she  should 
stand  unsmirched  from  all  such  profit.  There 
is  occasionally  some  validity  in  this  criticism. 
To  take  the  most  extreme  case  imaginable, — 
suppose  a  Church  should  profit  by  the  rents 
of  disorderly  houses  at  the  very  moment  she 
was  preaching  the  gospel  of  social  purity. 
The  contradiction  would  be  too  glaring  even 
for  invective.  But  some  evils  are  affairs  of 
the    whole   of   society   and    nothing  can   be 


ENDS   AND   MEANS  I97 

done  until  practically  all  act  together.  It  is 
scarcely  fair  in  such  case  to  rail  at  the  mem- 
ber of  the  Christian  communion  for  not  do- 
ing as  an  individual  alone  what  can  only  be 
done  by  a  large  majority  of  the  people  act- 
ing in  concert.  For  illustration  let  us  take  a 
political  doctrine  which  at  present  is  not  live 
enough  to  divide  us  into  hostile  camps, — a 
suggestion  from  the  free  silver  agitation  of 
some  twenty  years  ago.  Here  is  a  member 
of  the  Christian  community  sincerely  believ- 
ing that  the  gold  standard  is  wrong, — mis- 
taken not  merely  as  to  expediency  but 
morally  wrong.  He  sees  in  it  a  device  for 
robbing  the  debtors  to  enrich  the  creditors. 
Now  what  shall  this  Christian  do  ?  Shall  he 
individually  refuse  to  respect  the  ratio  be- 
tween gold  and  silver  established  by  the 
market  at  a  particular  date  ?  Shall  he  de- 
clare that  as  long  as  his  money  holds  out  he 
will  receive  silver  in  exchange  for  gold  at 
the  ratio  of  sixteen  to  one  instead  of,  say, 
fifty  to  one?  This  might  be  high  morality 
from  this  point  of  view  but  it  would  be  folly. 
He  might  better  recognize  that  a  ratio  in 
currency  is  something  about  which  a  whole 
people  have  to  act  together.  He  would  bet- 
ter put  up  with  the  system  for  the  time  being 
and    spend   what  money   he  has  publishing 


198  PERSONAL  CHRISTIANITY 

his  theory  to  others  whom  he  may  influence 
towards  the  desired  reform.  So  with  even 
larger  issues.  Each  of  us  discerns  faults  in 
the  social  order,  but  we  cannot  directly 
remedy  them  alone.  All  we  can  do  is  to 
proclaim  our  gospel  and  wait  for  the  ripen- 
ing of  the  understanding  of  the  people. 

But  we  must  come  to  the  illustrations  of 
the  working  out  of  the  difference  between 
persons  and  instruments  in  the  industrial 
sphere.  It  will  be  understood  of  course  that 
we  are  simply  laying  down  general  prin- 
ciples, with  no  attempt  whatever  to  take 
sides  on  current  debates.  We  begin  with 
that  social  instrument  which  we  know  as 
private  property.  The  ideas  of  private  prop- 
erty have  been  hammered  out  through  count- 
less centuries.  The  result  has  been  that  many 
have  come  to  regard  private  property  as  more 
sacred  than  life  itself.  We  often  hear  it  said 
that  property  rights  are  more  widely  re- 
garded than  human  rights.  Now  we  have 
no  cure-all  for  social  ills  ;  but  we  must,  if  we 
are  to  control  the  social  movement,  keep 
human  rights  inscribed  on  our  banners.  In 
spite  of  all  misunderstandings  to  the  con- 
trary there  are  no  widely-accepted  social 
programs  to-day  which  would  do  away  al- 
together with  private  ownership  of  property, 


ENDS  AND   MEANS  I99 

though  some  would  most  radically  limit  the 
extent  of  such  ownership.  There  is  small 
danger  that  the  institution  of  private  prop- 
erty will  be  overthrown.  But  there  is  ever- 
lasting need  of  emphasis  on  the  instrumental 
nature  of  private  ownership.  Wealth  is  a 
tool,  and  nothing  more.  As  an  instrument 
it  is  of  value.  It  often  is  a  determining 
factor  in  deciding  whether  a  man  shall  have 
a  chance  to  make  himself  moral  and  spiritual. 
The  crushing  materialism  of  masses  of  men 
is  the  materialism  of  no  materials.  They 
have  not  enough  matter  to  give  themselves 
anything  more  than  material  existence.  They 
have  so  little  of  the  things  of  this  world  that 
the  struggle  for  things  and  the  craving  for 
things  consume  altogether  too  much  of  their 
strength, — consume  all  of  their  strength.  If 
it  is  materialism  for  the  rich  man  to  be  pon- 
dering so  much  on  his  houses  and  lands  that 
he  has  not  time  for  the  intellectual  or  moral, 
it  is  materialism  for  the  poor  man  to  be  com- 
pelled to  think  so  much  of  his  lack  of  houses 
and  lands  and  even  of  food  or  clothing  that 
he  has  no  energy  for  the  intellectual  and 
moral.  The  cure  for  this  materialism  of 
poverty  is  more  matter.  Wealth  as  an  in- 
strument is  prodigiously  efftcacious.  The 
Christian  community  must  keep  this  doctrine 


200  PERSONAL   CHRISTIANITY 

constantly  before  the  people.  Beratings  of 
wealth  will  not  avail.  The  value  as  instru- 
ment must  be  recognized,  but  the  value  must 
stop  with  the  instrumental.  The  community 
has  just  as  much  right  to  undertake  modifica- 
tion in  the  institution  of  private  property  as 
it  has  to  undertake  modifications  in  any  other 
social  instrument  whatsoever.  The  only  sa- 
credness  of  property  rights  is  the  measure  of 
sacredness  which  may  attach  to  the  use  of  the 
rights.  There  is  small  danger  of  confisca- 
tion, but  there  is  likelihood  of  change,  in  the 
rule  governing  private  property  whenever 
the  institution  works  towards  social  harm. 

Take  the  private  ownership  of  land.  What 
is  the  basis  of  this  ownership  ?  Simply  the 
good  of  the  most  men, — good  of  course  in 
the  highest  sense.  If  the  community  should 
arise  and  forcibly  dispossess  the  holders  of 
the  land  the  confiscation  would  not  be  good 
for  anybody  concerned.  Centuries  would  be 
required  to  allay  the  bitterness  thus  engen- 
dered. But  some  changes  for  the  better  might 
be  adopted  without  confiscation.  The  com- 
munity might  be  expected  to  adjust  relations 
so  that  society  as  a  whole  would  have  more 
enjoyment  from  the  land.  Land  is  an  instru- 
ment, and  social  welfare  depends  on  the  right 
use  of  the  instrument.     It  is  to  the  interest  of 


ENDS   AND   MEANS  201 

society  as  a  whole  to  say  how  land  shall  be 
used  or  perhaps,  rather,  not  be  used.  The 
secret  of  the  strength  of  the  modern  move- 
ment towards  conservation  of  natural  re- 
sources lies  in  this, — that  the  treatment  of 
land  is  the  affair  of  all  of  society.  Of  course 
the  owner  of  the  land  may  say  that  the  land 
is  his, — but  that  is  not  the  final  pronounce- 
ment. It  may  not  remain  his  if  he  does  not 
use  it  aright.  Riding  some  time  ago  through 
a  section  of  the  country  far  distant  from  here, 
the  present  speaker  came  upon  a  district 
where  mining  enterprises  were  being  carried 
on  by  turning  over  the  top  of  the  earth  to  a 
great  depth.  What  had  once  been  a  fair 
valley  was  fast  being  transformed  into  heaps 
of  gravel.  The  gold  was  washed  from  the 
gravel  and  the  gravel  thrown  over  the  land. 
Now  it  is  obvious  that  when  land  is  once 
treated  after  this  fashion  there  is  no  further 
service  to  which  it  can  be  put.  It  has  not 
even  landscape  attractions.  In  this  particular 
corner  of  the  earth's  surface  the  harm  done 
may  not  be  considerable  as  compared  with 
the  value  of  the  gold  secured.  It  may  be  of 
more  consequence  to  society  to  have  in  cir- 
culation the  gold  washed  from  that  under- 
surface  gravel  than  to  have  the  top  preserved. 
But  we   could   not  consent  to  such  mining 


202  PERSONAL  CHRISTIANITY 

over  large  ranges  of  the  earth's  surface,  no 
matter  what  the  supposed  rights  of  private 
owners  might  be.  We  must  think  of  the 
good  of  the  community.  So  with  the  use  of 
rents.  When  an  owner  owns  land  and  then 
moves  from  the  land,  subsisting  entirely  upon 
the  rents  from  the  land  without  any  labour  of 
his  own,  we  can  justify  the  conduct  only  by 
showing  that  this  rent  instrument  is  never- 
theless a  good  instrument.  If  the  persons 
benefited  by  the  rents  are  in  some  way  render- 
ing service  to  the  community,  if  they  take 
their  unusual  opportunities  seriously  and 
utilize  their  income  to  make  themselves 
socially  worth  while,  the  rent  instrument  will 
be  tolerated.  But  such  a  system  is  always 
on  trial,  and  unearned  incomes  have  been 
back  of  just  about  as  many  revolutions  as 
any  other  single  cause  in  history.  The 
seizure  of  vast  estates  in  the  French  revolution 
was  not  confiscation  in  the  ordinary  sense. 
The  receivers  of  the  rents  were  not  showing 
themselves  socially  productive,  and  they 
were  dispossessed.  Society  has  at  crises 
fallen  back  upon  its  right  to  dispossess  land- 
lords, just  as  landlords  have  fallen  back  upon 
a  right  to  dispossess  tenants.  This  is  not 
an  alarmist  cry.  There  is  no  danger  in  this 
country  of  a  wholesale  casting  out  of  land- 


ENDS  AND   MEANS  203 

owners,  but  there  is  need  of  the  landowner's 
recognizing  his  enormous  obligation  to  be 
serviceable  to  society. 

When  we  come  to  the  ownership  of  the 
huge  tools  of  capital  the  same  standard  must 
be  kept  uppermost.  What  is  the  best  for 
men  as  a  whole  ?  Society  has  made  possible 
these  tools,  notably  the  transportation 
systems,  which  could  not  exist  if  it  were  not 
for  the  masses  of  persons  living  in  com- 
munities. The  community  is  largely  the 
creator  of  capitalistic  values.  Now  the 
question  as  to  who  shall  own  these  tools 
depends  altogether  upon  who  can  use  them 
best.  We  can  discuss  this  with  all  calmness 
just  now  because  nobody  is  in  immediate 
danger  of  robbery.  If  the  community  ever 
takes  over  the  tools  of  capitalism  it  will 
probably  take  them  over  on  fair  terms. 
Communities  in  our  day  have  not  shown 
much  disposition  to  be  unfair  in  these  respects. 
When  we  say  "  own  "  we  ought  perhaps  to 
say  control,  but  the  control  of  some  of  these 
instruments  is  in  such  few  hands  that  the  con- 
trol amounts  to  ownership.  Will  the  con- 
cern be  more  productive  under  one  type  of 
ownership  than  under  another?  Will  the 
rights  of  all  parties  be  subserved  as  carefully 
under   one   system   as   another  ?      Will   the 


204  PERSONAL  CHRISTIANITY 

realization  of  *'  the  long  run  "  have  as  much 
scope  under  one  system  as  another?  Will 
the  human  interests  be  as  safe  under  one 
system  as  another  ?  Under  what  plans  do 
the  instruments  stand  the  best  chance  of  get- 
ting into  the  worthiest  hands  ?  Society  in- 
sists upon  its  right  to  lay  down  the  rules 
under  which  instruments  which  may  be 
dangerously  handled  shall  be  placed  in 
human  hands.  For  example,  we  will  not  al- 
low men  to  carry  dangerous  weapons  in 
crowded  centres.  We  will  not  allow  igno- 
rant men  to  transport  dynamite.  We  insist 
that  only  trained  operators  shall  drive  loco- 
motives and  automobiles  and  trolley  cars. 
And  we  always  declare  that  we  have  a  right 
to  disarm  a  desperado.  Now  some  of  the 
capitalistic  tools,  by  which  we  mean  what  we 
call  capital  itself,  are  capable  of  being  as 
dangerously  used  as  any  material  instru- 
ments. It  is  society's  concern  as  to  who 
fingers  the  triggers  of  these  instruments. 
Society  has  a  right  to  withdraw  the  control 
of  these  tools  from  those  who  will  not  use  the 
tools  aright.  If  an  industry  is  making  im- 
possible the  conditions  of  normal  human  life 
society  does  not  have  to  halt  because  of  the 
outcry  from  stockholders  whose  profits  may 
be  cut  by  change  in  the  direction  of  that  in- 


ENDS   AND   MEANS  205 

dustry.  If  an  industry  itself,  like  the  liquor 
or  the  opium  traffic,  is  debauching  a  com- 
munity the  community  has  a  right  to  do 
with  the  industry  as  it  sees  fit,  and  that  in  the 
name  of  the  human  interests  involved.  The 
objects  of  social  endeavour  are  the  people  of 
the  community.  If  we  say  that  we  must 
tread  very  softly  towards  capital  lest  we  re- 
move the  incentive  to  production  on  a  large 
scale  we  reply  that  we  must  be  very  careful 
lest  we  give  incentive  to  waste  on  a  large 
scale.  If  it  be  urged  that  we  cannot  procure 
the  genius  which  can  control  the  capitalistic 
tools  without  holding  out  prospect  of  sur- 
passing rewards  we  reply  that  this  is  one  of 
those  cant  sophisms  which  appear  reason- 
able till  we  look  at  them  closely.  One  type 
of  genius  which  makes  modern  large  scale 
industry  possible  is  the  inventive  genius.  In 
actual  history  has  the  inventor  usually  or  often 
received  the  major  part  of  the  reward  for  his 
invention  ?  Does  not  the  inventor  work  as 
much  from  scientific  motives  as  from  finan- 
cial ?  The  other  effective  factor  on  the 
capitalistic  side  is  the  organizing  intelligence. 
We  freely  admit  the  supreme  industrial  value 
of  this  intelligence  and  we  concede  that  the 
organizer's  ability  is  always  in  peril  of  being 
underestimated  by  the  critics  of  the  existing 


206  PERSONAL  CHRISTIANITY 

system,  but  is  organizational  ability  always 
at  the  call  of  money  alone  ?  We  would  not 
glorify  war,  but  we  all  agree  that  the  success- 
ful general  in  modern  warfare  must  be  an  or- 
ganizing genius.  The  conduct  of  any  one  of 
the  larger  campaigns  in  our  Civil  War,  or  in 
the  Russo-Japanese  war,  or  even  on  the 
British  side  in  the  Boer  war  called  for 
enormous  organizing  ability.  But  the  pros- 
pect of  the  old-time  money  prizes  for  the  vic- 
tory was  nil.  If  society  could  arrive  at  such 
spirit  that  the  successful  manager  of  an  in- 
dustrial enterprise  for  the  welfare  of  the  com- 
munity would  be  honoured  as  military  heroes 
have  been  honoured  we  would  have  solved 
the  problem  of  securing  men  for  large  or- 
ganizational campaigns  without  paying  them 
extravagant  prizes. 

But  how  about  the  side  of  labour  and  its 
instruments  ?  Since  capital  possesses  the 
material  tools  of  large  scale  industry  the  only 
tools  left  to  labour  are  organizational.  The 
labour  organizations  in  any  Christian  teach- 
ing as  to  modern  society  have  to  come  under 
the  same  moral  laws  as  all  other  organiza- 
tions. We  may  well  thank  God  that,  barring 
exceptions  which  only  prove  the  rule,  labour 
leaders  take  the  ground  that  labour  organi- 
zational tools  must  be  manipulated  with  a 


ENDS   AND   MEANS  207 

human  purpose.  The  intellig-ent  labour  or- 
ganization member  will  no  more  treat  his 
organization  as  an  end  in  itself  than  the 
church  member  will  treat  his  organization  as 
an  end  in  itself.  The  organization  is  an  in- 
strument for  the  welfare  of  persons  and  as 
long  as  it  advances  in  that  direction  we  may 
well  rejoice  in  its  spread  of  power.  Only,  the 
power  under  intelligent  and  conscientious 
leaders  will  not  be  brute  power.  It  would  be 
a  sad  plight  if  after  we  had  found  our  way 
along  thus  far  in  the  path  of  peace,  and  if 
after  labour  organizations  have  themselves 
done  so  much  to  rid  the  world  of  the  curse  of 
international  w^ar,  we  should  have  these  na- 
tion-wide organizations  tolerating  even  a 
secret  reliance  upon  physical  force.  Of 
course  capitalism  has  had  its  brutalities  and 
the  general  public,  in  its  difference  to  the 
wrongs  of  labourers,  has  had  its  brutalities 
also,  but  that  is  all  the  more  reason  why  we 
should  all  work  together  for  the  elimination 
of  reliance  upon  force.  The  most  enlight- 
ened teaching  to-day  is  as  to  the  futility  of 
force  for  the  achievement  of  social  objects. 
The  labour  organization  that  takes  the  sword 
will  likely  perish  by  the  sword,  and  that  not 
by  the  sword  in  the  hands  of  outside  enemies, 
but  by   the  weapon  in  the  hands  of  those  in- 


208  PERSONAL   CHRISTIANITY 

side   who  will   resort  to  force  to  impose  their 
will  quickly  on  their  fellows. 

But  all  this  has  been  for  the  sake  of  illus- 
tration. We  pass  to  suggest  some  implica- 
tions of  our  principles  which  ought  to  mark 
the  Christian  preaching  as  society  marches 
towards  increasing  control.  It  may  be  well 
for  the  Church  often  to  recall  to  herself  the 
wide  extent  of  that  advance.  The  movement 
is  the  most  notable  trend  in  the  world  to-day. 
Whether  the  growing  scarcity  of  free  lands 
has  thrown  the  peoples  back  upon  themselves 
in  denser  and  denser  congestion,  or  whether 
the  increase  of  means  of  intercommunication 
makes  knowledge  so  common  that  men 
everywhere  catch  inspirations  which  arise 
anywhere,  the  truth  is  that  all  over  the  world 
social  groups  are  grasping  more  and  more 
control  for  themselves.  With  men  thrown 
thus  closer  together  the  teachings  of  Chris- 
tianity must  meet  severer  and  severer  strains. 
We  have  been  looking  chiefly  at  our  own 
country,  but  we  must  say  that  in  view  of  this 
world-wide  hastening  towards  increasing 
power  for  society  it  is  the  responsibility  of 
the  Christian  to  stand  for  that  gospel  which 
here  and  everywhere  will  righteously  guide 
the  advance  in  all  its  phases.  With  this 
portentous    centring  on  closer  unity  there  is 


ENDS   AND   MEANS  209 

likelihood  that  the  social  mechanism  will  be- 
come jammed  unless  there  is  wisdom  and 
unselfishness  in  relieving  some  of  the  pres- 
sures created  by  the  newer  forces.  In  a  sit- 
uation so  complex  it  would  be  folly  to  ven- 
ture far  into  detail,  but  some  suggestions 
seem  altogether  Christian.  How  to  apply 
them  must  be  left  to  the  economic  and  legis- 
lative expert.     But  they  must  be  applied. 

First  and  foremost,  industrial  and  political 
and  social  contrivances  must  stop  short  of  the 
point  where  workers  are  in  danger  of  becom- 
ing tools  or  of  being  treated  as  tools.  A 
labourer  who  is  living  a  merely  tool  existence 
is  just  as  much  unhuman  as  a  man  who  is 
living  a  merely  animal  existence.  One  criti- 
cism upon  capitalism  is  that  under  the  system 
which  cuts  the  ownership  of  the  tool  from  the 
man  who  actually  handles  the  tool,— the  me- 
chanical tool  to-day  is  the  whole  factory, — 
the  labourer  himself  comes  dangerously  near 
being  reduced  to  the  rank  of  a  tool.  The 
labourer  cannot  go  out  and  build  himself  a 
factory.  The  economic  freedom  of  the 
labourer  about  which  we  hear  so  much  often 
comes  just  to  that— the  Hberty  to  go  out  and 
build  another  factory  !  Even  if  he  could 
build  the  factory  he  would  find  difficulty  in 
getting  a  business  start.     We  may  say  that 


2IO  PERSONAL   CHRISTIANITY 

the  labourer  is  free  to  move  from  one  factory 
to  another,  but  not  after  the  factories  have 
become  Hnked  closely  together  in  manage- 
ment. We  may  say  that  he  is  at  liberty  to 
seek  another  line  of  employment,  but  that  is 
cruel  nonsense  if  the  man  is  past  the  age 
when  he  can  learn  another  trade,  or  if  he  has 
already  spent  much  time  in  becoming  expert 
in  a  chosen  occupation.  Any  system  which 
makes  it  possible  for  one  man  virtually  to 
own  another  man  is  wicked.  Any  system 
which  makes  men  just  cogs  in  a  wheel  is 
wrong.  We  have  come  far  towards  victory 
in  the  battle  against  animalism  in  men, — 
at  least  we  have  so  far  won  that  we  all  unite 
in  the  condemnation  of  the  forces  which  make 
for  animalism.  But  it  is  not  so  with  the  bat- 
tle against  making  men  tools.  Faithfulness 
to  a  daily  task  is  admirable,  but  when  that 
faithfulness  ends  in  making  the  worker  just  a 
part  of  the  machinery  it  is  time  for  a  break 
somewhere.  If  the  task  itself  is  not  one 
which  lends  itself  to  that  diversified  play  of 
faculties  which  keeps  the  mind  interested, 
there  must  be  provision  for  the  leisure  in 
which  the  more  human  powers  can  get  their 
exercise.  That  was  really  a  righteous  pro- 
test which  the  newspapers  reported  as  occur- 
ring   on   the   ships   of   a   certain  navy  some 


ENDS  AND   MEANS  211 

months  ago.  The  protest  may  be  just  news- 
paper gossip  but  it  illustrates  our  point.  The 
story  is  that  a  number  of  men  had  enlisted  in 
a  navy  on  the  promise  that  they  would  have 
opportunity  to  see  something  of  the  world. 
That  may  have  been  a  poor  expedient  for 
enlisting  sailors,  but  such  seems  to  have  been 
the  method.  After  the  sailors  had  enlisted 
the  vessels  were  stationed  at  a  dreary  port  on 
a  sub-tropical  island.  The  recruits  protested 
that  this  was  not  in  accordance  with  the 
terms  of  the  enlistment.  The  coast  of  the 
sub-tropical  island  is  something  of  the  world, 
— but  not  enough  of  the  world.  The  story 
continues  that  the  protest  was  heeded. 
Whether  all  this  happened  or  not,  the  story 
suggests  one  fault  with  much  more  of  the 
modern  system  than  the  navies.  Battle-ship 
existence  apart, — men  in  general  are  not 
given  enough  outlook  on  the  world.  They 
sink  into  a  machine  routine  which  is  less  re- 
volting but  not  much  more  ideal  than  an 
animal  existence.  The  social  activities  of  all 
groups  from  the  national  down  to  the  indus- 
trial should  stop  short  of  anything  which 
would  harden  men  into  machines  or  tools. 

Furthermore,  the  social  agencies  should  be 
prevented  from  any  levelling  process  which 
would  leave  men  so  much  alike  as  to  destroy 


212  PERSONAL  CHRISTIANITY 

what  is  distinctively  individual  in  them.  For 
one  type  of  individualism  it  will  be  readily 
seen  that  we  have  little  patience.  Men  can- 
not come  to  any  individuality  alone.  And 
they  cannot  come  to  any  high  distinction 
without  some  social  adjustment  which  puts 
them  where  they  can  best  work.  The  con- 
demnation of  both  extremes  of  the  modern 
industrial  organization  is  that  they  both  alike 
level  men  to  sameness.  Poverty  may  be  so 
crushing  that  the  poor  man  cannot  rise  to 
what  would  be  distinction  in  character,  or  he 
is  submerged, — and  when  men  are  submerged 
they  all  look  alike.  We  sometimes  say  that 
at  time  of  shipwreck  it  is  a  tribute  to  the  per- 
ception of  human  values  that  all  men  look 
alike  to  the  rescuers.  Women  and  children 
first,  to  be  sure,  but  after  that  the  men  with- 
out any  thought  of  difference  in  rank  or  birth 
or  endowment.  This  is  noble  in  the  applica- 
tion for  which  it  is  intended,  but  how  horrible 
that  we  can  say  of  society  that  it  too  is  so 
filled  with  disaster  that  the  sinking  people  all 
look  alike  to  us  !  We  sing  the  advantages 
of  poverty  but  we  have  in  mind  something 
like  the  Cotter's  Saturday  Night  or  those  sur- 
roundings in  which  Americans  like  Abraham 
Lincoln  were  reared.  The  hardship  of  such 
early  circumstances  as  those  of  Lincoln  was 


ENDS  AND   MEANS  213 

indeed  appalling,  but  hardship  is  not  desti- 
tution.    Lincoln  was  not  poor  after  the  pov- 
erty   of  the  man  who  has  no  hope  for  the 
future  and  whose  plight  is  absolutely  dehu- 
manizing.    The    levelling    rollers  should  be 
lifted    of^   the    poor   man.     The  question   of 
getting  just  enough  to  eat  is  not  before  us  ; 
we  are  speaking  of  the  freedom  to  live  out 
the  life  which  is  distinctive.     The  charge  that 
the    Christianization    of    the    social   system 
would  have  a  flattening  effect  is  ridiculous  in 
view  of  the  deadliness  of  the  poverty  of  the 
present  world  as  a  leveller.     And  then  at  the 
other  extreme  of  the  scale  is  a  similar  danger 
to  which  the  over-rich  man  is  exposed.     It 
may  provoke   a   smile   to   say  that  society 
should  do  something  for  the  protection  of  the 
rich  man  against  the  levelling  influences  of 
too  much  wealth,  but  such  is  the  duty  never- 
theless.    We  are  speaking  more  particularly 
of  those  of  inherited  wealth.     The  man  who 
has  heaped  up  the  money  ordinarily  knows 
how  to  avoid  the  roller  processes.     But  when 
we  have  before  us  the  class  reared  in  extrav- 
agance, the  responsibility  of  society  for  the 
levelling   crush  of  wealth  appears.      In  the 
parable  of  the  rich   man  and  Lazarus  Jesus 
used  the  expression  "  A  certain  rich  man." 
The  expression  may  be  entirely   accidental, 


214  PERSONAL   CHRISTIANITY 

but  the  suggestion  seems  to  be  that  it  was 
Lazarus  who,  in  spite  of  his  condition,  had 
distinction  enough  to  be  called  by  a  name 
and  the  rich  man  was  just  an  undistinguish- 
able  rich  man  like  the  other  rich  men.  Deaf 
to  all  call  to  stimulating  endeavour  such  a 
Dives-soul  sinks  below  the  truly  individual 
and  exists  on  the  plane  of  commonness. 
This  rich  man  may  be  a  fairly  good  citizen, 
but  he  does  not  always  manifest  the  talent  or 
even  the  genius  he  might  have  shown  if  he 
had  not  been  smothered  or  rolled  flat  by 
wealth.  This  is  not  invective  ;  it  surely  is 
not  a  proposal  for  a  raid  ;  it  is  a  bare  state- 
ment of  what  seems  to  be  a  fault  in  society 
as  it  exists  under  present  distributions. 

Continuing  in  this  same  direction  the  Chris- 
tian spirit  would  sanction  all  those  arrange- 
ments by  which  men  are  brought  to  do  some 
things  together  so  that  they  can  be  left  to 
do  other  things  separately.  By  constituting 
some  duties  everybody's  business  we  provide 
more  leisure  for  the  individual  to  attend  to 
his  own  business.  Some  obligations  can  best 
be  discharged  by  the  whole  community  to- 
gether, or  by  those  who  act  as  agents  for  the 
community  taken  as  a  unit.  As  illustration 
think  how  much  time  is  saved  for  the  indi- 
vidual in  a  city  by  the  common  water  supply. 


ENDS   AND   MEANS  215 

Suppose  each  inhabitant  of  a  community  had 
to  look  after  his  own  water  supply.  The  well 
or  the  private  pipe  would  be  a  perpetual 
annoyance.  To  say  nothing  of  its  getting 
out  of  order  there  would  be  continually  the 
imminent  threat  of  disease.  That  old  oaken 
bucket  was  dangerous  enough  even  when  no 
other  family  lived  within  a  mile,  for  it  may 
have  been  too  near  the  contamination  from 
the  house  of  the  owner  himself.  But  the  old 
oaken  bucket  was  safe  enough  for  all  pur- 
poses if  the  water  looked  reasonably  clear. 
Such  a  test  would  not  hold  to-day.  Only 
the  expert  can  detect  the  typhoid  germ. 
Now  so  simple  a  contrivance  as  the  common 
water  supply  does  away  with  an  immense 
amount  of  worry  and  leaves  the  mind  free  to 
follow  its  bent.  We  say  ''follow  its  bent" 
advisedly,  for  that  is  how  minds  find  them- 
selves. They  must  have  leisure  for  wander- 
ing around  the  favourite  subjects  if  they  are 
ever  to  reach  any  considerable  intellectual  or 
artistic  or  even  ethical  attainment.  Without 
regard  to  the  exact  theoretical  formulation  of 
our  hopes  we  may  well  trust  that  by  some 
scheme  or  other  the  tasks  which  can  best  be 
performed  for  communities  as  units  w^ill  one 
by  one  be  given  over  to  those  who  will  look 
after  them  for  communities  as  units,  so  that 


2l6  PERSONAL   CHRISTIANITY 

more  and  more  the  individual  will  be  left 
free  to  become  distinctive  if  not  distinguished. 
If  we  could  look  forward  a  distance  of  one 
hundred  years  from  now  we  would  probably 
behold  an  astonishing  number  of  tasks  given 
over  to  community  control  which  we  now 
think  never  could  be  so  delegated.  The 
criticism  which  is  to  be  passed  upon  the 
individualistic  system  in  its  extreme  develop- 
ment is  that  it  is  not  individualistic  enough  : 
the  individuals  do  not  get  the  best  chance. 
The  most  forceful  individuals  may  get  to  the 
fore,  but  we  have  long  since  given  up  that 
doctrine  of  the  survival  of  the  fittest  which 
makes  the  fittest  to  survive  necessarily  the 
most  deserving  of  survival. 

Putting  this  in  still  another  phrase  we 
may  say  that  we  should  seek  for  the  uni- 
formities in  experience  which  will  make  for 
varieties.  To  escape  the  odium  of  too  fre- 
quent reference  to  industrial  situations  we 
employ  an  illustration  drawn  from  church 
enterprise.  In  many  sections  of  this  coun- 
try churches  are  needlessly  duplicating  one 
another's  activities.  In  frontier  districts 
there  may  be  two  or  three  churches  where 
there  should  be  but  one.  It  would  be  a  gain 
all  around  if  the  denominations  could  come 
to  enough  agreement  as  to  tests  of  member- 


ENDS   AND   MEANS  21 7 

ship  and  order  of  worship  and  formulation  of 
belief  and  local  administration  to  make  a 
church  of  any  denomination  welcome  to  vir- 
tually all  the  religious  people  of  a  community. 
The  need  of  duplication  would  then  pass. 
The  energy  saved  could  be  better  economized, 
with  the  result  that  each  denomination  would 
have  more  likelihood  of  fulfilling  whatever 
might  be  its  distinctive  mission,  and  once 
the  organizations  were  seen  to  be  instru- 
ments rivalry  would  be  more  friendly.  It 
would  lack  the  deadly  seriousness  which 
comes  when  a  tool  is  regarded  as  an  end- 
in-itself.  So  as  to  social  cooperation.  We 
might  find  more  of  common  ground  which, 
while  it  would  make  conduct  and  duties 
more  uniform,  would  leave  individuals  free 
for  the  development  of  the  true  human  dis- 
tinctiveness. We  might  limit  individual  ini- 
tiative at  some  outlets  for  the  sake  of  giving 
the  individual  greater  initiative  through  other 
channels. 

The  individual  needs  more  privacy  than 
he  gets  to-day.  It  is  a  grim  and  tragic  joke 
to  hear  men  dismiss  modern  plans  for  larger 
social  cooperation  on  the  ground  that  we 
must  not  intrude  upon  the  privacy  of  individ- 
uals. As  if  the  modern  scramble  for  profits 
in  tenement  houses,  for  example,  made  for 


2l8  PERSONAL  CHRISTIANITY 

the  privacy  of  the  occupants  !  We  do  need 
privacy  for  individuals.  All  modern  social 
reformers  see  the  futility  of  the  communistic 
programs  which  involve  living  together. 
Such  schemes  go  to  pieces  because  people 
see  too  much  of  one  another.  Even  foreign 
missionaries  living  in  compounds  have  to  ex- 
ercise care  lest  they  become  "  too  thick  "  with 
one  another.  Present-day  social  plans  aim 
at  providing  more  privacy  for  the  individual 
by  taking  off  his  single  mind  burdens  which 
can  better  be  borne  collectively,  thus  leaving 
him  free  to  live  the  strictly  private  part  of 
his  life  in  his  own  way.  Larger  mutual  re- 
spect would  result.  Competition  would  be- 
come more  and  more  friendly  rivalry  instead 
of  a  war  to  the  death. 

To  say  it  all  over  again, — we  might  lay 
down  a  doctrine  of  equality  for  the  sake  of 
the  resulting  inequality.  If  we  could  more 
nearly  equalize  some  burdens  we  would  have 
more  leisure  for  the  free  play  of  individuality. 
We  plead  for  diversity.  We  must  have 
diversity  if  we  are  to  have  any  degree  of 
richness  and  fullness  of  individual  life.  In- 
equality is  just  as  characteristic  of  life  as  is 
equality, — only  the  inequality  must  not  be 
such  as  to  suggest  a  lurking  injustice  some- 
where.    We  need  a  world  of  incommensur- 


ENDS  AND   MEANS  219 

able  personal  inequalities.  If  we  can  have 
men  so  distinct  that  we  cannot  well  compare 
them  with  one  another  much  bitterness  of 
envy  will  disappear.  A  man  ought  to  have 
scope  to  develop  the  good  traits  of  which  he 
may  have  a  personal  monopoly.  For  sake 
of  illustration  again  we  make  a  harmless 
reference  which  all  can  accept.  Suppose  we 
had  under  any  social  system  approximate 
equality  of  taxation.  This  does  not  mean  a 
system  by  which  all  should  pay  a  like  sum 
into  a  treasury  as  a  man  pays  a  poll  tax,  but 
a  system  by  which  each  man  would  pay 
what  he  ought  to  pay, — no  more  and  no  less. 
What  an  advance  upon  present  situations 
that  would  be, — for  nobody  could  well  claim 
that  any  present  system  is  equitable, — even 
if  no  men  were  tax-dodgers.  Even  under  so 
commonplace  a  burden  as  the  payment  of 
taxes,  if  men  were  more  nearly  equal  as 
serving  under  a  more  equitable  system,  the 
economy  of  human  energy  which  now  goes 
to  nervous  friction  and  irritation  would  be 
immeasurable. 

And  to  say  it  once  more, — men  might  well 
subject  themselves  in  an  improved  order  of 
society  to  greater  subordination  among  the 
lower  goods  for  the  sake  of  greater  freedom 
among  the  higher  goods.     We  might  agree 


220  PERSONAL  CHRISTIANITY 

to  a  surrender  of  some  lower  liberties  in  a 
common  bond  of  search  for  some  higher 
liberties.  We  might  enter  into  some  ar- 
rangements which  would  take  the  load  of 
financial  stress  off  over-weighted  shoulders 
and  more  equitably  distribute  the  strain. 
The  race  took  a  long  step  forward  when  the 
progress  of  invention  lifted  the  physical 
weights  off  the  shoulders  of  men  and  placed 
them  on  muscles  of  iron  and  steel.  Another 
improvement  may  be  to  lighten  the  stress  for 
daily  bread  so  as  to  secure  more  freedom  in 
the  search  for  spiritual  bread.  It  all  comes 
down  to  this, — the  Christian  is  in  society  for 
the  purpose  of  giving  the  members  of  society 
a  better  chance.  His  work  is  not  merely 
remedial.  The  work  of  Jesus  was  not  merely 
to  open  the  blind  eyes  but  to  give  the  eyes 
something  worth  seeing  after  they  were 
opened.  He  unlocked  prison  doors  not 
merely  to  let  out  the  men  inside,  but  to 
show  them  what  to  do  after  they  got  out. 
He  healed  the  lame  not  merely  to  help  them 
walk  erect  but  to  help  them  to  travel  in  the 
right  direction.  We  will  not  believe  that 
this  world  cannot  be  made  a  better  instru- 
ment for  the  development  of  righteousness. 
We  hear  it  said  that  the  world  as  we  have  it 
is  a  good  world  for  the  purpose  for  which  it 


ENDS  AND   MEANS  221 

is  intended.  Far  be  it  from  us  to  venture 
any  criticism  on  the  universe,  but  there  are 
some  details  in  our  latitude  which  need 
correction.  Men  need  to  give  heed  to  the 
significance  of  the  material  for  the  spiritual. 
Society  should  seek  to  make  the  earth  more 
of  an  aid  to  the  life  of  righteousness.  We 
should  at  least  try  to  make  the  world  such 
that  men  can  afford  to  be  honest  here.  We 
cannot  believe  that  we  are  always  to  look 
upon  this  present  world  as  a  vale  of  tears. 
Tragedy  there  will  no  doubt  always  be,  but 
all  the  more  reason  for  seeking  to  mitigate 
the  tragedy.  It  is  conceivable  that  under  a 
thoroughly  Christian  society  even  the  tragedy 
of  death  would  be  reduced  to  less  painful 
woe  than  at  present.  The  fear  of  death 
might  be  done  away  in  a  community  which 
had  practiced  righteousness  into  the  warp 
and  woof  of  all  conduct.  The  horror  of 
sudden  death  by  accident  or  even  by  disease 
might  be  made  less  frequent  through  proper 
regard  for  human  life.  The  fear  of  poverty 
through  the  loss  of  the  bread-winner  might 
be  greatly  reduced.  There  would  remain  of 
course  the  dire  agony  of  separation  from 
loved  ones,  but  that  might  be  lessened  in  a 
fully  human  community  quick  and  warm 
with  genuine  sympathy.     If  over  all  of  this 


222  PERSONAL   CHRISTIANITY 

there  could  stretch  a  sky  radiant  with  the 
hopefuhiess  which  comes  from  reahzing  God 
in  experience  there  would  hardly  be  an  in- 
strument comparable  to  this  earth  for  the 
development  of  righteousness.  The  very 
possibility  of  dreaming  of  such  outcome  is  a 
signal  and  summons  for  the  attempt  to  realize 
the  dream. 

But  we  come  back  to  our  main  thesis. 
Before  the  earth  is  much  improved  the  peo- 
ple in  it  must  learn  what  is  supremely  worth 
while.  If  they  can  learn  the  uses  of  instru- 
ments and  can  give  themselves  to  the  right 
use  of  instruments  the  future  is  bright.  It  is 
not  safe  to  have  stupendous  instruments  de- 
livered into  the  keeping  of  men  before  the 
men  know  how  to  use  them.  We  have  only 
to  look  to  a  condition  like  that  in  semi-bar- 
barous countries  to  see  the  trouble  which  re- 
sults when  high-powered  instruments  are  put 
in  the  hands  of  people  who  rush  readily  to 
internecine  wars  with  no  conviction  of  respon- 
sibility. The  only  saving  fact  in  such  a  crisis 
is  that  the  people  cannot  shoot  straight 
enough  to  hit  the  objects  at  which  they  aim, 
— though  the  destruction  is  terrific  when  non- 
combatants  are  exposed.  The  peoples  of  the 
earth  seem  to  be  sweeping  determinedly  on 
towards  larger  and  larger  social  powers.     It 


ENDS  AND   MEANS  223 

is  the  function  of  the  Christian  portion  of  the 
community  to  seek  to  dike  and  levee  this 
movement  into  the  right  channels.  It  will 
be  observed  that  we  have  made  little  of 
definite  suggestion  as  to  any  particular  prob- 
lems now  before  the  peoples.  All  we  have 
tried  to  show  is  that  some  simplification  re- 
sults when  we  discern  the  true  aim  of  our  ef- 
fort,— the  highest  life  of  man, — normal  life  in 
the  enjoyment  of  all  legitimate  functions. 
The  enjoyment  of  this  life  as  part  of  the 
divine  plan, — this  is  the  goal.  The  social 
instruments,  the  laws,  the  institutions,  can 
help  mightily  in  assisting  us  towards  this 
fundamental  goal.  Dynamite  is  deadly.  If 
men  use  dynamite  to  destroy  one  another  it 
is  a  curse,  but  dynamite  turned  against  a 
nature  which  must  be  transformed  is  a  bless- 
ing. It  can  blow  to  pieces  rocks  which 
would  turn  the  point  of  the  strongest  pick- 
axe. It  lifts  the  loads  in  an  instant  that 
hundreds  of  men  could  not  budge  in  weeks. 
All  depends  on  who  uses  the  instrument 
and  what  he  uses  it  for.  Law.  is  mighty,  if  it 
is  the  expression  of  the  good  life,  but  suppose 
law,  instead  of  aiming  at  good  will  for  men, 
aims  at  vengeance  and  hate.  Then  the 
dynamic  force  tears  down  and  does  not  build 
again.     We  end  as  we  began.     Society  can 


224  PERSONAL   CHRISTIANITY 

modify,  or  set  aside,  or  create  outright  social 
instruments  for  the  accompHshment  of  its 
purposes.  But  instruments  are  instruments 
and  must  be  used  by  persons  for  the  sake  of 
persons. 


LECTURE  VI 

EVERY  KINDRED  AND 
PEOPLE  AND  TONGUE 


LECTURE  VI 

EVERY  KINDRED  AND  PEOPLE  AND 
TONGUE 

WE  have  reserved  to  the  last  the 
study  of  the  program  of  the  Chris- 
tian community  in  world-wide  mis- 
sionary conquest.  Before  looking  up  at  the 
ideal  which  the  missionary  has  to  keep  al- 
ways in  sight  we  glance  at  some  underlying 
conditions  which  limit  the  Christian  in  his 
direct  appeals  to  the  peoples  whom  he  seeks 
to  win.  The  intercourse  of  the  missionary 
with  what  we  call  heathenism  is  but  one  of 
the  contacts  of  Christendom  with  heathenism. 
The  most  fundamental  barrier  to  missionary 
enterprise  is  the  difficulty  of  bringing  these 
different  contacts  into  some  agreement  with 
one  another.  In  our  own  land  the  contradic- 
tion between  the  Christian  ideal  and  the  un- 
christianized  aspects  of  society  is  wide  enough, 
but  we  have  some  appreciation  of  the  diffi- 
culty and  struggle  on  towards  harmony.  In 
other  lands  such  mental  adjustment  is  often 
nearly  impossible.  The  native  sees  the  gap- 
227 


228  PERSONAL   CHRISTIANITY 

ing  abyss  between  the  missionary's  preach- 
ing and  the  wickedness  of  the  missionary's 
own  countrymen  and  may  have  no  particular 
interest  in  seeking  an  adjustment.  George 
Francis  Train  used  to  say  that  he  objected  to 
sending  to  China  missionaries  with  whom  to 
convert  the  Chinaman  and  ammunition  with 
which  to  kill  the  Chinaman  on  one  and  the 
same  vessel  because  such  mixed  cargo  was 
apt  to  be  confusing  to  the  Chinese  mind.  At 
the  centre  of  the  foreign  missionary  problem 
is  a  home  missionary  problem.  We  hear 
much  about  the  cultivation  of  the  home  base 
in  missionary  campaigning,  and  the  reference 
is  to  the  cultivation  of  a  home  basis  of  sup- 
plies of  money  and  men.  We  need  also  the 
fuller  Christianization  of  the  home  base.  If 
we  cannot  bring  our  industrial  and  political 
and  social  organizations  to  Christian  stand- 
ards and  redeem  them  from  paganism  the 
direct  appeal  of  the  missionary  is  made  more 
than  doubly  difficult  because  these  difTerent 
institutions  send  out  their  representatives  into 
other  lands  to  make  a  deadly  competition 
with  missionary  forces. 

The  contacts  of  the  Christian  nations  and 
of  the  non-Christian  nations  are  chiefly  those 
of  the  tourist,  of  the  trader,  of  the  diplomatist, 
and   of   the   missionary.     Each   of   the   first 


EVERY  KINDRED,  PEOPLE  AND  TONGUE   229 

three  named  is  himself  a  missionary  of  one 
sort  or  another.  The  conduct  of  each  is 
preaching  in  one  direction  or  another  even 
though  the  preaching  is  unconscious.  Take 
the  tourist.  We  do  not  often  give  weight  to 
the  influence  of  the  tourist  in  international  in- 
tercourse, but  such  influence  is  quite  potent. 
When  the  tourist  returns  home  from  a  non- 
Christian  land  and  begins  to  berate  the  mis- 
sionary to  that  land  we  discount  the  tourist 
very  heavily.  We  know  well  enough  that 
the  tourist  has  not  taken  pains  to  learn  what 
he  is  talking  about.  But  the  tourist  himself 
while  abroad  makes  impressions  on  the  for- 
eigner which  the  foreigner  does  not  know 
how  to  discount.  Very  frequently  the  tourist 
is  travelling  solely  for  holiday  sightseeing.  It 
is  to  be  doubted  if  any  man  who  visits  foreign 
peoples  chiefly  for  recreation  can  make  much 
of  those  peoples.  Of  course  the  observa- 
tions of  the  serious  student  are  not  just 
now  under  review.  But  the  "globe-trotter" 
tourist  sees  all  inhabitants  in  an  alien  coun- 
try as  about  alike,  and  towards  them  all  he 
is  apt  to  assume  an  air  of  aloofness.  This  is 
almost  inevitable  unless  the  traveller  be  a 
man  of  marked  attainment  of  character.  Even 
when  travelling  in  European  countries  the 
American  may  plume  himself  on  the  fancied 


230  PERSONAL  CHRISTIANITY 

superiority  of  American  customs  and  Ameri- 
can institutions,  and  is  now  slow  to  express 
his  gratification.  Patriotism  may  account 
for  some  of  this  pride.  Add  to  this  that  the 
"  globe-trotters  "  of  the  holiday  tourist  class 
are  apt  to  be  persons  of  wealth,  often  newly- 
acquired,  and  that  they  are  reenforced  in  their 
assumption  of  national  and  racial  superiority 
by  the  possession  of  money,  and  we  have  the 
explosives  at  hand  for  some  unhappy  dis- 
charges. If  this  is  true  in  European  lands 
how  much  more  is  it  true  in  what  we  call 
heathendom?  Years  ago,  reputable  writers 
have  told  us,  the  foreign  sojourner  in  Japan 
occasionally  thought  it  fine  sport  to  strike 
with  his  stick  the  coolie  pulling  a  jinrickisha. 
This  may  not  have  happened  often,  but  it 
happened  often  enough,  though  it  is  only  fair 
to  say  that  such  insults  have  not  occurred 
since  Japan's  last  war.  While  the  stick-using 
may  now  have  ceased  the  spirit  thus  revealed 
has  not  altogether  passed.  We  would  not 
have  it  understood  that  this  is  the  customary 
state  of  mind  among  tourists,  for  it  is  not ; 
but  there  is  enough  of  such  feeling  to  attract 
notice  among  the  natives  of  the  non-Christian 
countries.  Moreover  the  tourists  who  sim- 
ply travel  through  a  country  attending  to 
their  own  business  and  treating  the  natives 


EVERY  KINDRED,  PEOPLE  AND  TONGUE   231 

with  civility  do  not  command  the  attention 
that  the  other  tourists  attract.  All  peoples 
resent  the  assumption  of  aloofness  by  visitors 
from  outside.  Quite  likely  Charles  Dickens 
in  his  **  Notes  on  America  "  did  not  overstate 
the  crudeness  of  our  country  when  he  visited 
it,  but  what  he  said  rankles  in  the  breasts  of 
some  Americans  to  this  day.  Likewise  lofti- 
ness of  manner  in  the  unofficial  and  uninten- 
tional and  unconscious  representatives  of 
Christendom  who  visit  non-Christian  peoples 
is  unspeakably  galling  to  those  peoples. 

Now  what  is  the  trouble  ?  Just  this, — that 
the  tourist  is  not  of  a  class  who  take  the  doc- 
trine of  human  brotherhood  with  any  serious- 
ness. It  is  an  enigma  as  to  how  many 
Christian  populations  do  take  that  doctrine 
seriously,  however,  so  we  may  say  that  the 
trouble  with  the  tourist  is  that  he  is  not  will- 
ing to  think  of  the  peoples  whom  he  visits  as 
belonging  to  the  order  of  human  beings  to 
which  he  himself  belongs.  He  often  looks 
upon  them  as  a  spectacle  or  show  in  which 
he  is  to  find  entertainment.  The  tourist  is 
the  outcome  and  the  expression  of  widely 
prevalent  social  notions  of  our  time.  He  is  a 
social  product,  just  as  the  others  of  us  are 
social  products,  and  he  represents  a  type 
of   thought,    or  of   lack   of   thought,    and  a 


232  PERSONAL  CHRISTIANITY 

type  of  attitude.  Until  Christianity  has  so 
thoroughly  permeated  the  social  ideals  of 
our  own  lands  that  much  larger  masses 
of  men  have  become,  not  necessarily  avow- 
edly Christian,  but  substantially  Christian 
in  their  bearing  towards  human  beings 
wherever  found,  the  teaching  of  the  mission- 
ary will  have  to  encounter  grave  obstacles. 
But  is  it  not  possible  for  the  Christian  ideal 
to  make  so  complete  a  conquest  among  us  ? 
We  think  it  is.  We  have  so  attained  to  ideas 
of  elementary  decency  in  Christian  lands  that 
there  are  some  misdeeds  which  any  man, 
whether  a  professing  Christian  or  not,  will 
condemn.  There  are  acts  and  attitudes  w^e 
will  not  tolerate  because  we  have  learned,  or 
at  least  absorbed,  a  regard  for  essential  hu- 
manity in  ourselves,  if  not  in  other  people. 
For  example  the  dweller  in  Christendom  wdll 
not  peaceably  tolerate  physical  filth.  He 
will  keep  his  body  and  his  house  measurably 
clean  whether  any  one  is  to  see  him  or  not. 
Likewise  there  are  moral  abominations  with 
which  the  normal  man  reared  in  civilized 
lands  will  not  compromise,  no  matter  what 
may  be  his  moral  shortcomings  in  other 
respects.  We  do  not  ahvays  stop  to  think  of 
the  conquests  of  Christianity  registered  in 
these   facts.     Virtually   every  man  in  every 


EVERY  KINDRED,  PEOPLE  AND  TONGUE   233 

Christian  land  has  been  forced  to  the  adop- 
tion of  some  ideals,  limited  though  they  may 
be,  by  the  progress  of  Christian  sentiment. 
There  were  once  vices  whose  very  names 
have  long  since  faded  out,  and  this  because 
of  the  progressive  realization  of  the  human 
ideal.  Now  we  expect  Christian  conceptions 
of  man  so  to  gain  ground  that  whether  this 
or  that  single  person  becomes  a  disciple  of 
Christ  or  not,  no  person  will  take  some  atti- 
tudes towards  heathen  peoples  that  are  as- 
sumed to-day.  To  allude  again  to  the  inci- 
dent of  the  stick-using  on  the  Japanese. 
Apart  from  the  fear  of  consequences,  such 
outrageous  behaviour  would  hardly  be  possi- 
ble anywhere  among  tourists  to-day.  We 
expect  cruelty  and  boorishness  to  die  out. 
But  the  task  of  assisting  their  death  is  a  home 
task  ;  the  home  base  needs  to  be  so  pervaded 
with  human  sympathy  that  wherever  we  go 
we  shall  look  upon  men  as  men,  no  matter 
what  may  be  the  accidents  of  race  or  poverty 
or  ignorance  or  moral  inadequacy. 

The  second  class  of  obstacles  in  the  path 
of  the  Christian  conquest  of  the  world  is  that 
represented  by  the  trader.  It  has  always 
been  true  that  the  trader  has  bothered  him- 
self very  little  about  what  he  has  sold  to 
foreign  natives.     To  the  trader  the  natives 


234  PERSONAL  CHRISTIANITY 

are  not  so  much  human  beings  as  buyers  of 
wares.  The  trader  has  been  guided  mainly 
by  what  he  has  found  the  natives  likely  to 
buy.  The  "five  hundred  barrels  of  rum" 
which  the  New  England  sea-captains  used  to 
carry  as  cargo  to  the  West  Coast  of  Africa 
were  shipped  because  there  was  a  demand 
for  them.  The  effect  of  the  rum  on  the  native 
did  not  disturb  the  captain  any  more  than  it 
has  disturbed  his  successors  at  the  business 
since.  Moreover  cheating  a  native  was 
partly  a  pleasure  and  partly  a  duty.  In  trad- 
ing with  the  American  Indians  a  Dutchman's 
hand  in  the  scale  of  which  the  other  pan  was 
loaded  with  furs  never  weighed  more  than 
one  pound  and  his  foot  never  weighed  more 
than  two  pounds.  Whatever  the  means  the 
aim  was  the  same, — to  exploit  the  native  for 
the  utmost  possible. 

All  this  was  bad  enough  when  the  repre- 
sentatives of  the  so-called  Christian  nations 
were  Yankee  sea-captains,  or  their  like,  each 
doing  business  somewhat  on  his  own  account. 
Then  an  occasional  stirring  of  conscience  in 
the  Yankee  might  arise  and  relieve  the  native. 
But  the  outcome  has  been,  at  least  until  quite 
recently,  made  worse  by  the  growth  and 
aggressiveness  of  corporate  finance.  It  will 
be  understood  that  the  present  speaker  has 


EVERY  KINDRED,  PEOPLE  AND  TONGUE   235 

no  intention  of  indulging  in  wholesale  con- 
demnation of  wealth,  but  we  all  know  that 
even  here  at  home  corporations  thrive  best 
morally  when  they  enjoy  the  full  light  of 
publicity.  Unrestricted  competition  and 
unregulated  monopoly  are  paganism  as 
rank  as  the  rawest  heathenism.  There 
are  inherent  and  inevitable  tendencies  to 
evil  in  the  very  situation  which  make  ex- 
ceedingly difficult  the  control  of  the  large- 
scale  instruments  of  wealth  working  in  a 
foreign  land  away  from  the  home  ofBce. 
First  of  all  the  distant  representative  is  not 
judged  by  his  treatment  of  employees  as  is 
the  official  at  home.  At  home  the  feelings  of 
the  people  with  whom  the  corporation  does 
business  have  to  be  reckoned  with.  The 
customers  must  be  pleased  and  the  labourers 
also,  and  general  public  sentiment  must  not 
be  disregarded.  The  directors  of  the  corpora- 
tion look  more  exclusively  at  profit  or  loss 
when  scrutinizing  the  returns  from  foreign, 
non-Christian  lands.  The  excuse  that  profits 
have  fallen  because  regard  had  to  be  taken 
of  the  sentiment  in  the  foreign  community 
as  to  how  the  labourers  there  were  treated 
does  not  weigh  as  it  would  at  home.  More- 
over all  businesses  are  under  the  pressure  for 
expansion.     If  they  cannot  expand  at  home 


236  PERSONAL  CHRISTIANITY 

because  of  the  exactions  of  public  sentiment 
and  the  requirements  of  legislatures  and  the 
severity  of  public  officials  they  nevertheless 
seek  to  show  a  gain  in  the  total  volume  of 
business  done  by  pushing  foreign  expansion. 
Added  to  this  is  the  temptation  of  business 
agents  living  in  lands  far  from  home  and 
often  far  from  high-minded  society  to  sink  to 
the  level  of  vicious  surroundings.  The  total 
tendency  is  down-hill. 

Now  the  picture  must  not  be  painted  darker 
than  it  is.  The  corporation  is  in  the  foreign 
country  for  business  purposes, — to  get  as 
much  out  of  the  natural  resources  as  possible 
and  to  profit  as  much  from  the  native  labour 
as  possible.  But  even  so  the  natives  are 
often  better  treated  by  foreign  employers 
than  by  employers  of  their  own  race.  In 
Mexico  for  example  the  poor  peons  who  can 
do  nothing  but  the  commonest  labour  would 
often  sooner  hire  out  to  Americans  than  to 
persons  of  their  own  race, — and  this  not  only 
because  the  American  pays  better  wages  but 
because  he  is  apt  to  treat  his  labourers  more 
humanely.  Apart  from  exceptional  atrocities 
like  those  of  the  rubber  and  ivory  trades  the 
native  labourers  employed  by  foreign  business 
leaders  in  non-Christian  lands  are  not  likely 
to  be  abused.     The  speaker  knows  of  at  least 


EVERY  KINDRED,  PEOPLE  AND  TONGUE   237 

one  instance  where  the  English  manager  of  a 
cotton  mill  in  Bombay  was  followed  to  his 
steamer  as  he  left  for  home  by  a  group  of 
native  employees  in  genuine  grief  at  the 
departure  of  one  who  had  in  all  his  relations 
to  them  treated  them  kindly.  But  conceding 
all  this  and  much  more  the  situation  makes 
for  the  obliteration  of  the  distinction  which 
have  so  emphasized  in  these  lectures,  the 
distinction  between  men  and  tools.  No 
matter  how  indispensable  an  instrument 
wealth  may  be  it  is  not  important  enough  to 
justify  the  disregard  of  human  interests. 

It  does  not  help  us  much  to  say  that  all 
this  exploitation  of  the  resources  of  heathen 
lands  is  accomplished  by  the  consent  of  the 
rulers  of  the  lands  themselves.  We  are  think- 
ing of  the  welfare  of  the  vast  numbers  whom 
the  rulers  may  not  represent  at  all.  Take 
the  granting  of  concessions  to  foreign  capital 
by  governments  in  financial  distress.  A  na- 
tion gets  into  trouble  and  borrows  money. 
Then  in  return  for  money  aid  huge  conces- 
sions of  resources  are  granted  by  those  who 
have  the  legal  authority  to  do  so.  The  in- 
terests of  the  people  of  the  land  itself  are 
often  the  last  to  be  heeded.  In  a  state  which 
has  passed  through  such  concessions  to  sub- 
jection to  foreigners  so  complete  that  there 


238  PERSONAL   CHRISTIANITY 

may  be  scant  standing  room  left  for  the  na- 
tives the  people  may  rise  in  revolution  ;  then 
there  is  cry  for  military  intervention  in  be- 
half of  the  endangered  foreign  interests.  Or 
foreign  collectors  are  placed  in  charge  of  the 
custom  houses  until  finances  can  be  adjusted. 
The  effect  on  the  temper  of  the  native  peoples 
in  such  crises  is  not  hard  to  imagine. 

What  is  the  remedy  ?  There  is  but  one 
answer  and  one  solution, — the  completer 
humanization  and  moralization  and  spiri- 
tualization  of  all  our  so-called  civilized  busi- 
ness procedure.  We  are  not  urging  this  or 
that  or  the  other  industrial  platform.  We 
are  pleading  for  the  approach  to  the  problems 
which  wealth  creates  from  the  point  of  view 
of  the  human  interests  involved.  We  beg  for 
a  public  sentiment  which  shall  so  widen  the 
meaning  of  the  term  '*  human  beings  "  as  to 
include  the  peoples  of  whom  we  are  ac- 
customed to  speak  as  heathen.  We  protest 
against  the  oversight  of  the  truth  that  wealth 
is  a  mere  instrument.  Now  instruments  may 
cost  too  much  in  the  fashioning,  or  they  may 
not  be  rightly  used  after  they  are  fashioned. 
An  old  legend  tells  us  that  an  oriental  ruler 
once  conceived  the  fancy  that  his  sword 
blades  could  be  brought  to  just  the  right 
temper   by   being   thrust    hot    through    the 


EVERY  KINDRED,  PEOPLE  AND  TONGUE   239 

thigh  of  a  slave.  Suppose  such  a  proposal 
should  be  advanced  by  some  despot  and  we 
should  protest  to  him  that  such  tempering 
makes  the  sword  blade  too  costly.  Suppose 
he  should  reply  that  we  were  mistaken,  that 
the  slave  cost  so  much  and  the  blade  was 
worth  so  much  more.  If  we  had  the  power 
to  proceed  to  extremities  with  such  a  despot 
we  would  not  longer  debate,  for  we  would 
say  that  the  despot's  reply  argued  an  utter 
density  of  ignorance  as  to  human  values. 
Business  enterprises  may  develop  into  keen 
instruments  but  they  may  cost  too  much  in 
terms  of  humanity.  The  public  sentiment 
which  will  see  this  and  will  hold  the  instru- 
ments to  the  instrumental  position  will  help 
tremendously  in  the  Christianization  of  the 
world. 

Then  there  is  the  diplomat  representing  as 
he  does  the  sentiment  of  his  people  on  the 
national  and  governmental  side.  The  Chris- 
tian nations  in  recent  years  have  much  to 
their  credit  in  their  diplomacy  with  the  so- 
called  less  favoured  nations.  England,  bar- 
ring some  terrible  blunders  in  other  days, 
has  been  on  the  whole  humane  in  her  policies 
towards  the  people  whom  she  rules, — so  that 
so  sharp  and  cynical  a  critic  as  William 
Graham  Sumner  once  declared  that  it  would 


240  PERSONAL   CHRISTIANITY 

be  well  if  England  could  be  put  in  possession 
of  all  the  remaining  unappropriated  territories 
of  the  globe.  It  would  be  unjust  to  say  that 
England  does  not  chiefly  consider  the  welfare 
of  her  subject  peoples  both  in  India  and 
Egypt.  This  is  all  the  more  noteworthy  from 
the  pressure  of  the  world-wide  financial  in- 
terests to  make  themselves  the  uppermost 
considerations  in  international  policy. 

In  spite  of  the  noble  aim  of  much  inter- 
national bearing,  however,  and  in  spite  of  the 
success  of  many  ministers  and  ambassadors 
in  resisting  the  tendency  towards  an  aristo- 
cratic caste  system  which  infests  so  many 
diplomatic  circles,  it  is  hard  for  diplomacy 
to  rise  much  higher  than  its  source,  and  that 
source  is  the  people  of  the  Christian  nations 
themselves.  Public  opinion  is  the  determin- 
ing power.  And  that  public  opinion  will  not 
always  be  content  to  allow  its  wiser  leaders 
to  be  the  mouthpieces.  So  that  whenever  a 
California  land  law  is  up  harm  is  wrought 
not  so  much  by  the  terms  of  the  law  itself  as 
by  the  inability  of  many  debaters  to  see  that 
the  Japanese  are  human  beings.  If  such 
problems  could  always  be  discussed  as  the 
careful  diplomatist  would  discuss  them, — 
with  due  regard  to  the  human  decencies,  to 
say  nothing  of  the  human  courtesies, — they 


EVERY  KINDRED,  PEOPLE  AND  TONGUE   24I 

could  be  more  often  adjusted  without  arous- 
ing ill-feeling.  But  these  international  epi- 
sodes unravel  overnight  what  the  representa- 
tive of  the  Church  has  been  weaving  through 
the  day.  Granted  that  any  country  has  the 
right  to  exclude  from  its  borders  those  who 
will  become  a  public  charge,  those  who  may 
lower  the  standard  of  living  in  the  country, 
and  those  who  may  prove  to  be  an  alien 
body  in  a  democracy,  still  there  are  choices  of 
methods  and  manners  in  the  exercise  of  these 
undoubted  rights. 

The  position  of  the  diplomat  is  a  delicate 
one.  He  is  of  all  men  most  likely  to  be  mis- 
understood. But  he  is  just  a  spokesman, 
and  skillfully  as  he  may  conduct  himself,  all 
depends  on  the  public  sentiment  back  of  him. 
The  sentiment  needs  being  made  Christian 
— which  can  only  be  accomplished  by  mak- 
ing the  public  Christian.  We  must  work 
towards  the  time  when  the  strong  nations 
will  honestly  protect  the  weaker  nations. 
The  strong  peoples  cannot  rule  the  weaker 
even  for  the  good  of  the  weaker  by  mere 
strength  alone  ;  neither  can  they  leave  them 
entirely  to  themselves.  If  the  public  senti- 
ment of  the  civilized  lands  could  arrive  at 
such  a  stage  of  evident  unselfishness  that 
the  weaker  nations  would  be  willing  to  listen 


242  PERSONAL  CHRISTIANITY 

to  the  counsel  of  the  stronger,  something 
very  much  worth  while  could  be  accom- 
plished, especially  if  the  advice  took  the  form 
of  helping  the  weaker  peoples  on  towards 
self-government. 

And  just  here  it  may  be  in  order  to  say  a 
word  about  making  a  fetich  of  words  in  our 
struggle  to  help  nations.  The  charmed  word 
in  our  day  is  "  democracy."  In  so  far  as 
democracy  is  a  people  governing  themselves 
and  aiming  to  reach  human  ideals  it  is  an 
end-in-itself.  Democracy  in  that  meaning  is 
the  people  themselves  in  the  process  of 
governing  themselves  for  themselves  in  the 
highest  sense.  The  cry  for  democracy  for  a 
weaker  people  may  be  for  the  ideal  of  a  self- 
governing  community  or  it  may  be  for  per- 
mission to  allow  the  people  to  follow  out 
their  own  devices.  The  devices  have  only 
such  sacredness  as  attaches  to  them  from  their 
success  in  helping  on  the  people.  Now  the 
interests  of  democracy  may  be  aided  by  a 
nation  which  steps  in,  say  to  a  country  in 
which  inhuman  institutions  prevail,  and  puts 
an  end  to  those  institutions,  the  proviso  al- 
ways being  that  such  action  is  backed  up  by 
a  public  sentiment  of  the  interfering  nation 
which  never  loses  sight  of  the  main  issue. 
For  example  England  stamped  out  of  India 


EVERY  KINDRED,  PEOPLE  AND  TONGUE   243 

the  most  complete  institution  of  thuggery 
which  the  imagination  could  have  conceived. 
In  doing  so  she  interfered  with  a  native  in- 
stitution,— breaking  up  a  monstrous  invention 
of  the  peoples  of  India,  but  her  interference 
was  in  accord  with  the  dictates  of  humanity, 
and  of  course  was  a  necessary  step  towards 
whatever  measure  of  genuine  self-govern- 
ment India  is  ever  to  have.  When  a  nation 
in  its  weakness  reaches  the  beginnings  of 
degeneracy  so  that  even  order  is  impossible, 
the  coming  in  of  an  outside  nation  is  necessary 
for  the  humanity  of  the  people  themselves, 
— and  for  their  progress  towards  democracy. 
It  is  not  interference  with  the  progress  of 
a  people  towards  democracy  to  prevent  them 
from  doing  what  may  make  democracy  im- 
possible. 

Freedom  is  another  word  which  may  trip 
our  feet  as  we  fight  to  liberate  men.  We  say 
that  the  weaker  peoples  are  to  be  left  alone 
to  fight  out  and  achieve  their  own  salvation. 
It  will  always  ward  off  confusion  when  we  are 
confronted  by  such  unreal  simplifications  if 
we  ask  as  to  actual,  concrete  social  facts. 
The  present  speaker  has  no  theory  as  to  the 
proper  method  of  detailed  procedure, — say 
for  the  United  States  in  relation  to  the 
weaker  states  of  Latin-America.     But  what 


244  PERSONAL  CHRISTIANITY 

do  theorists  mean  when  they  declare  that 
these  peoples  should  be  left  absolutely  alone 
to  work  out  their  own  salvation  as  free 
beings?  Does  this  mean  that  the  public 
sentiment  of  nations  like  ours  is  not  to  count 
even  in  an  advisory  capacity  ?  One  Latin- 
American  dictator  succeeds  another  dictator. 
The  success  of  the  dictator,  for  the  moment 
on  top,  may  be  due  to  no  moral  or  intellec- 
tual or  even  human  strength.  His  success 
may  represent  just  the  physical  efficacy  of 
brute  might.  The  people  are  not  free  under 
him,  or  under  the  successor  who  is  bloody 
enough  to  put  him  out  of  the  way.  The 
people  have  no  chance  under  such  dictators 
to  attain  freedom.  The  facilities  for  educa- 
tion are  not  sufficient,  and  the  opportunities 
for  experiment  in  self-government  are  noth- 
ing at  all.  Under  such  sway  the  people  really 
sink  farther  and  farther  below  real  freedom. 
In  the  name  of  theoretical  freedom  they  are 
allowed  to  fall  away  from  actual  freedom  and 
to  miss  all  chance  for  actual  freedom. 

It  behooves  us  always  to  guard  ourselves 
against  what  the  old  philosopher  called  ''  the 
fatal  imposture  and  deceit  of  words."  Words 
are  instruments  and  nothing  more.  It  is  pos- 
sible to  erect  an  instrument  into  an  end-in-it- 
self  and  forthwith  to  forget  the  vital  content 


EVERY  KINDRED,  PEOPLE  AND  TONGUE   245 

in  the  mere  repetition  of  the  word.  In  a  sub- 
stantive sense  there  is  no  such  thing  as  free- 
dom. The  only  reaUty  is  men  living  freely. 
In  pondering  over  all  such  questions  the 
public  mind  must  not  be  deceived.  It  must 
keep  in  view  the  interests  of  the  men  and  the 
methods  of  helping  them  to  act  more  and 
more  freely.  Even  this  word  "  humanity  "  of 
which  we  have  been  making  so  much,  and  of 
which  nations  sometimes  insincerely  make  so 
much  when  they  are  seeking  for  reasons  for 
entering  aggressively  the  territories  of  weaker 
peoples,  is  an  instrument  like  the  others. 
The  facts  are  people, — men,  women  and 
children,  and  the  methods  of  helping  them 
most  effectively.  Words  erected  into  holy 
idols  will  not  prove  much  more  effective  than 
idols  usually  prove. 

And  now  some  man  will  wail  forth  that  if 
missionary  progress  cannot  come  to  the  full 
tide  until  the  Christian  nations  develop  this 
unselfish  interest  in  men  we  might  just  as 
well  give  up  the  battle.  But  why  despair, 
even  if  the  ideal  is  high  ?  In  spite  of  all  that 
the  cynics  say  about  the  selfishness  of  nations 
there  are  citizens  who  vote  on  international 
issues  unselfishly  and  if  some  vote  thus  others 
may.  Many  of  us  have  voted  on  platforms 
having  to  do   with   the  Philippines,  for   ex- 


246  PERSONAL  CHRISTIANITY 

ample.  Now  political  and  financial  leaders 
may  have  taken  advantage  of  us  in  using 
selfishly  our  unselfish  feeling,  but  we  have 
voted  unselfishly.  We  know  that  much, — 
and  we  have  enough  humility  not  to  imagine 
that  we  monopolize  political  righteousness. 
If  we  think  and  vote  thus  others  can, — and 
do.  The  main  sentiment  of  the  United 
States  to-day  towards  the  Philippines  and 
towards  Cuba  is  unselfish.  Many  who  have 
projects  of  an  industrial  or  political  character 
to  promote  might  conceivably  thwart  this 
unselfish  feeling,  especially  since  we  do  not 
claim  that  the  sentiment  is  effectively  organ- 
ized. But  we  can  increase  and  enforce  this 
unselfishness.  We  ask  just  for  the  extension 
of  the  regard  for  the  truest  human  interests 
of  all  human  beings  into  political  theory  and 
action.  Our  governmental  policies  play  far 
more  part  in  shaping  the  opinion  of  the 
peoples  to  whom  we  go  with  the  Gospel  than 
we  can  estimate.  If  we  can  work  the  national 
unselfishness  out  into  expression  our  problem 
is  well  on  towards  solution.  Or  rather  if  we 
could  cultivate  a  positive  interest  in  the  wel- 
fare of  peoples  beyond  our  lands  we  could 
move  much  more  swiftly  to  success.  Of 
course  we  are  not  to  forget  the  enormous 
material  and  labour  resources  to  be  developed 


EVERY  KINDRED,  PEOPLE  AND  TONGUE   247 

in  China,  for  example,  and  we  ought  to 
further  the  Christianization  of  such  lands  for 
the  sake  of  the  utilization  of  this  material 
and  personal  power,  but  the  primary  motive 
is  not  the  material  or  the  labour  reservoir  of 
power.     The  first  motive  is  the  people. 

But  it  is  high  time  we  arrived  at  the  mission- 
ary himself.  It  would  not  have  been  alto- 
gether worth  while,  however,  to  discuss  the 
missionary  and  his  duties  without  heeding 
the  backlying  conditions  which  have  to  be 
taken  into  the  reckoning  in  the  impact  of 
Christian  nations  upon  the  less  favoured 
nations.  As  we  said  at  the  outset,  the  hand 
of  the  missionary  is  but  one  of  many  laid  by 
the  Christian  nation  upon  the  heathen  nation. 
The  note  sounded  by  the  missionary  in  the 
ears  of  the  heathen  people  is  but  one  note, — 
and  it  may  be  drowned  out  by  the  other 
notes,  or  it  and  they  may  be  most  wofully 
out  of  accord. 

So  far  as  the  all-essential  is  concerned  the 
missionary  must  come  to  his  task  interested 
primarily  in  his  people  because  they  are 
human  beings.  He  is  there  for  the  sake  of 
the  men,  women  and  children  themselves. 
They  are  folks  like  himself,  in  spite  of  all  the 
differences.  Even  what  seem  to  him  their 
gross  immoralities  are  in  them  more  nearly 


248  PERSONAL   CHRISTIANITY 

unmoralities.  The  missionary  may  reply  to 
us  that  he  supposed  he  was  going  to  the 
field  primarily  for  the  sake  of  Christ,  but 
what  does  he  mean  by  this  phrase  if  not  that 
he  is  going  to  help  those  for  whom  Christ 
died?  Jesus  wrought  upon  men  to  help 
them,  and  He  poured  fierce  condemnation 
upon  all  professedly  religious  folk  who  had 
not  the  willingness  thus  to  serve.  If  Jesus 
were  to  reappear  on  earth  to-day  and  set 
Himself  to  labour  among  non-Christians  it 
would  be  for  the  sake  of  the  people.  The 
whole  earthly  aim  of  Christianity  is  to  serve 
those  now  on  earth. 

To  be  sure  there  is  force  in  the  missionary's 
question.  He  may  infer  that  we  advise  that 
he  should  forget  the  more  spiritual  aspects  of 
missionary  effort  in  the  passion  for  the  im- 
mediate relief  of  lives  in  terrible  distress. 
We  hasten  then  to  say  that  the  duty  is  at  all 
times  spiritual.  The  missionary  is  to  strike 
at  once  to  the  spiritual  centres,  arousing  the 
conviction  for  sin,  pointing  the  path  to  for- 
giveness, preaching  the  good  news  of  the 
good  God.  Only,  this  evangel  is  to  be 
thoroughgoing.  From  the  moment  when 
the  missionary  gets  enough  people  converted 
to  create  anything  like  a  social  spirit  he  is 
under  obligation   to   teach    the   converts  to 


EVERY  KINDRED,  PEOPLE  AND  TONGUE   249 

carry  the  newly-found  God  into  their  social 
relationships.  Just  as  in  the  home  land  we 
are  to  urge  progressive  salvation  which  will 
include  all  a  man's  relationships  to  his  neigh- 
bours so  in  the  mission  field  must  we  preach 
the  same  salvation.  The  fundamental  motive 
is  to  get  the  individual  into  prayer  and  com- 
munion with  the  God  of  Jesus.  After  that 
we  must  push  the  divine  conquest  into  those 
realms  of  the  believer's  life  which  touch  other 
lives  for  the  sake  of  making  him  and  his 
fellows  more  human  here  and  now.  As  has 
been  so  often  said,  it  is  not  so  much  the  duty 
of  keeping  the  non-Christian  nations  out  of 
hell  hereafter  which  confronts  us,  as  the  duty 
of  getting  them  out  of  hell  here  and  now. 

Everything  comes  back  to  the  idea  of  God 
as  revealed  in  Jesus.  That  idea  carries  with 
it  positive  and  specific  ideas  of  what  man  is 
and  of  the  possibility  of  man's  becoming 
more  like  God.  Allowing  all  we  please  for 
the  play  of  economic  forces  in  the  life  of  alien 
peoples,  we  have  to  admit  that  our  very 
ability  to  detect  the  evil  tendency  of  eco- 
nomic forces  lays  upon  us  the  responsibility 
for  the  correction  of  those  tendencies.  The 
strategic  attack  is  that  of  the  missionary.  If 
the  missionary  went  into  a  non-Christian  field 
and  began  to  work  entirely  from  without,  on 


250  PERSONAL   CHRISTIANITY 

the  assumption,  let  us  say,  that  healthier 
physical  bodies  would  be  enough  of  an  ob- 
ject for  him  to  achieve,  we  could  at  once 
concede  the  justice  of  the  charge  of  super- 
ficiality. But  when  the  missionary  plants 
the  idea  of  God  in  the  inner  life  of  his  fol- 
lowers and  works  outward  from  thence,  we 
have  to  praise  him  for  proceeding  upon  work- 
manlike principles.  Jesus  did  not  indeed  at- 
tack by  name  the  outstanding  economic  and 
political  wrongs  of  His  day,  but  He  did  begin 
within  men  and  set  ideas  to  seething  which 
had  an  inevitable  expansive  and  even  ex- 
plosive tendency.  It  is  impossible  to  accom- 
plish everything  in  a  few  months,  but  Jesus 
so  placed  His  truth  in  the  hearts  of  men 
that  He  knew  the  development  must  surely 
encircle  the  outward  institutions.  The  proc- 
ess of  growth  involves  expansions.  As  well 
might  a  vineyard  dresser  protest  that  the 
vine  is  doing  a  merely  superficial  work  when 
it  is  reaching  out  for  more  room  to  accom- 
modate its  increasing  length  and  diameter 
as  for  a  critic  of  Christian  methods  to  say 
that  the  methods  are  artificial  and  superficial 
when  they  reach  outward  from  the  inner 
germ.  What  the  vine  is  doing  is  building 
larger  channels  for  the  sap  ;  and  more  sap 
means  more  fruit. 


EVERY  KINDRED,  PEOPLE  AND  TONGUE   25 1 

The  present  speaker  heard  at  widely  dif- 
ferent periods  two  great  men  make  two  great 
utterances  which  by  right  belong  together. 
I  once  heard  Dr.  William  F.  Warren,  the 
greatest  student  of  the  faiths  outside  of  Chris- 
tianity that  I  have  ever  known,  say  that  the 
majority  of  the  inhabitants  of  the  earth,  when 
they  attempt  to  conceive  of  God  conceive  of 
Him  as  best  symbolized  by  some  unhuman 
form, — multitudes  of  persons  finding  no  bet- 
ter symbol  for  Him  than  a  serpent  or  dragon. 
I  once  heard  Bishop  James  M.  Thoburn,  the 
greatest  missionary  I  have  ever  known,  say 
that  the  majority  of  the  inhabitants  of  the 
earth  lie  down  to  rest  every  night  without 
having  known  through  the  day  the  satisfac- 
tion of  enough  to  eat.  The  two  statements, 
though  uttered  by  different  men,  fitly  belong 
together,  for  each  has  significance  for  the 
other.  If  we  could  get  men  to  a  nobler  idea 
of  God  a  nobler  idea  of  humanity  would 
follow ;  and  if  a  nobler  idea  of  humanity 
followed,  a  better  state  of  human  existence 
would  appear, — while  conversely  a  better 
state  of  human  existence  would  lead  to  a 
healthier  conception  of  God.  The  mission- 
ary has  to  utilize  both  spiritual  and  physical 
influences,  but  his  primary  function  is  to 
point  men  straight  to  God.     Doing  that  will 


252  PERSONAL   CHRISTIANITY 

ultimately  transform  even  the  outward  envi- 
ronment and  this  in  turn  will  react  for  good 
on  the  religious  view  of  those  won  for 
Christianity. 

Professor  Borden  P.  Bowne  used  to  say 
that  Asia  past  and  present  is  the  sufficient 
condemnation  of  the  Asiatic  religions.  A 
genuine  philosopher  saw  the  intimate  bond 
between  the  view  of  God  which  the  Asiatic 
peoples  have  held  and  the  outcome  in  Asiatic 
life.  There  may  have  been  a  stage  in  the 
history  of  religions  when  the  worship  of  even 
the  fructifying  and  reproductive  principles  of 
nature  led  only  to  innocent  results,  but  the 
final  outcome  of  such  worship  is  sure  to  be 
abomination  like  the  rankness  of  some  cults 
in  India  to-day.  Religions  are  to  be  judged 
not  only  by  their  intellectual  formulation  but 
by  their  total  appeal  to  the  impulses  of  men 
as  men  actually  are.  It  is  a  peculiarity  of 
any  religion  that  it  cannot  remain  static.  It 
moves  up  or  down,  and  the  Asiatic  heathen- 
isms have  not  moved  up.  "  Raw  "  heathen- 
ism grows  rawer.  Nothing  demonstrates 
more  conclusively  the  power  of  the  religion 
of  the  ancient  Hebrews  than  the  vigour  with 
which  it  clung  to  its  upward  course  in  spite 
of  the  contaminating  influences  from  the 
nations    round    about.     When    the    ancient 


EVERY  KINDRED,  PEOPLE  AND  TONGUE   253 

prophets  denounced  the  worship  of  heathen 
gods  in  terms  which  suggested  abominable 
and  unnatural  immoralities  they  were  not 
indulging  in  figures  of  rhetoric.  Idolatry- 
slides  downward  into  baseness.  Nothing  can 
be  swifter  than  the  rush  down-hill  when  im- 
morality is  labelled  with  the  name  of  religion. 
Or  think  of  a  creed  which  is  loftier  and 
purer  than  any  species  of  nature  worship, — 
the  creed  of  ancestor  worship.  Here  would 
appear  to  be  a  religion  laying  stress  on  the 
recognition  of  value  in  human  life.  The  an- 
cestors are  worthy  of  supreme  honour.  But 
the  essential  deification  of  actual  men  has  led 
away  from  the  ennoblement  of  humanity.  It 
may  seem  odd  to  hear  Mormonism  spoken  of 
as  heathenism,  but  there  was  once  in  Mor- 
monism, though  there  may  not  be  now,  a 
trace  of  heathenism  in  the  form  of  ancestor 
worship.  A  man  was  to  be  honoured  in  pro- 
portion to  the  number  of  his  descendants. 
Polygamy  would  be  the  natural  outcome  of 
such  belief.  Professor  Ross  has  calculated 
that  through  the  demand  for  sons  to  honour 
the  ancestors  China  brings  forth  five  genera- 
tions in  a  period  which  normally  ought  to 
produce  only  four.  Through  the  intense 
stimulus  of  any  belief  which  thus  forces  too 
many  beings  into  existence  the  value  of  the 


254  PERSONAL  CHRISTIANITY 

single  life  falls.  Life  literally  becomes  cheap. 
Then  we  have  the  wretched  adjustment  of 
the  human  vitality  to  a  standard  of  living 
hardly  human  at  all.  There  are  degrees  of 
adversity  which  furnish  the  stimulus  to  char- 
acter-building, but  such  wretchedness  as  re- 
sults from  overcrowding  like  that  of  China 
and  India  is  so  far  below  what  we  in  Western 
lands  think  of  as  adversity  and  poverty  as  to 
make  the  terms  inapplicable.  We  have  in- 
deed in  China  and  India  a  manifestation  of 
what  the  human  race  can  achieve  against 
desperate  odds,  but  that  is  not  the  revelation 
of  which  we  are  desirous.  We  desire  the  un- 
folding of  men's  possibilities  under  favoura- 
ble circumstances.  We  are  looking  not  for 
the  environment  in  which  the  physically 
toughest  alone  can  survive,  but  for  the  en- 
vironment which  gives  impulse  to  the  human 
energies  towards  something  beyond  hardiness. 
It  is  sometimes  said  to  the  credit  of  the  China- 
man that  he  is  able  to  live  on  next  to  noth- 
ing, and  that  he  is  immune  to  typhoid  fever ! 
But  better  not  be  immune  to  typhoid  fever  if 
the  immunity  carries  with  it  an  immunity  of 
mind  and  feeling  towards  the  filth  which  pro- 
duces typhoid  fever.  There  are  much  more 
glorious  victories  possible  for  the  Chinaman 
than   to   become  immune  to  typhoid.     The 


EVERY  KINDRED,  PEOPLE  AND  TONGUE   255 

human  victory  for  the  milHons  of  China  is  not 
Hkely  to  come  until  the  birth-rate  in  China 
falls.  The  birth-rate  will  fall  when  polygamy 
and  concubinage  and  general  laxity  of  sexual 
relationships  cease.  These  will  decline  when 
ancestor  worship  passes.  Ancestor  worship 
will  pass  as  the  worship  of  the  true  God 
comes.  With  the  worship  of  the  true  God 
will  arrive  a  new  estimate  of  the  value  of  a 
man, — and  the  new  estimate  of  the  worth  of 
a  man  will  work  back  in  turn  through  more 
and  more  beneficial  channels  to  enlarge  the 
idea  of  God. 

Even  the  more  abstract  notion  of  fatalism 
which  haunts  many  theologies  has  direct  hu- 
man consequences.  The  drowsy  passivity  of 
the  Indian  ryot  in  the  presence  of  plague,  the 
crazy  rush  of  the  Mohammedan  warrior  upon 
the  machine  guns  of  his  enemy,  the  utter 
callousness  of  the  Mexican  peon  to  the  threat 
of  death  by  bandits  and  revolutionists, — all 
these  reveal  the  dehumanizing  deadliness  of 
a  belief  which  makes  men  merely  the  play- 
things of  fate.  The  fatalistic  creeds  all  end 
in  attaching  less  and  less  value  to  human  life. 
The  idea  of  God  revealed  by  Jesus  cannot  be 
taken  seriously  without  enhancing  the  value 
of  men,  and  that  increased  worth  of  men  and 
the  happy  consequences  which  flow  forth  from 


256  PERSONAL   CHRISTIANITY 

thence  are  potent  signs  of  the  presence  of 
God  in  the  world.  While  we  have  condemned 
the  plan  of  going  forth  into  non-Christian 
lands  with  schemes  merely  for  the  physical 
development  of  the  lands,  it  nevertheless  must 
be  said,  after  we  have  focused  our  view  into 
correct  perspective,  that  the  very  lands  of  the 
world, — the  soil,  the  mines,  the  water-powers, 
— will  never  have  their  chance  until  the  Chris- 
tian idea  seizes  the  peoples.  To  turn  West- 
ern science  in  full  blast  upon  the  material 
resources  of  the  Orient  now,  with  the  Western 
lands  themselves  not  fully  Christianized,  and 
with  Christianity  barely  started  in  the  Eastern 
lands,  might  lead  to  industrial  calamity.  But 
with  the  whole  world  Christianized  into  some 
notion  of  stewardship  as  applied  to  material 
goods  there  is  no  reason  why  through  the 
long  future  lands  now  burdened  to  exhaustion 
may  not  revive  into  garden  beauty.  And 
there  is  every  reason  why  these  resources 
should  ultimately  work  for  the  deepening  and 
enrichment  of  human  experience. 

We  have  said  that  we  go  forth  into 
heathen  lands  because  the  less  fortunate  peo- 
ples need  us.  We  also  need  them.  Life  is 
such  that  it  does  not  in  human  beings  run  an 
even  stream.  It  calls  for  seasonal  refresh- 
ment and  revival.     We  crave  the  inspiration 


EVERY  KINDRED,  PEOPLE  AND  TONGUE   257 

of  the  tingle  of  world-wide  victory.  Just  as  in 
the  career  of  our  own  country  the  entire  na- 
tion was  quickened  by  the  consciousness  of 
an  ever-expanding  frontier  where  pioneer 
spirits  were  pushing  on  ahead  of  the  nation, 
so  we  are  stirred  by  the  stories  of  the  con- 
quests of  the  Cross  out  upon  the  frontier. 
But  more  important  than  the  need  of  the 
heathen  for  us  and  the  need  of  ourselves  for 
the  conquests  of  heathenism  is  the  demand 
of  the  whole  Christian  community,  present 
and  future,  for  whatever  any  portion  of  the 
community  can  contribute  to  the  joy  of  the 
whole.  The  Church  of  Christ  yearns  for  the 
heathen  peoples  because  of  the  fine  possibil- 
ities of  the  heathen  as  human  beings.  With 
the  growth  of  a  genuine  Christian  conscious- 
ness the  reflective  students  discern  more  and 
more  worth  in  men  everywhere,  taken  just  as 
human  beings.  Christianity  would  be  poor 
without  the  diversity  of  view  and  manner 
which  abound  as  persons  of  widely  separated 
place  of  abode  and  habit  of  life  merge  into 
more  intimate  understanding  of  one  another 
as  members  of  one  Christian  body.  The 
speaker  once  heard  two  professors  from  a 
distinguished  university  discussing  the  policy 
of  having  preachers  of  different  denomina- 
tions appear  before  college  students.     When 


258  PERSONAL  CHRISTIANITY 

one  expressed  the  opinion  that  the  sounding 
of  diverse  notes  as  to  religious  conviction  be- 
fore college  students  would  tend  to  confuse 
them,  the  other  replied  that  one  need  of  stu- 
dents everywhere  is  to  realize  the  luxuriant 
variety  and  diversity  of  religious  approach  to 
central  themes.  The  religious  convictions 
are  as  diversified  as  the  peoples  themselves. 
When  we  glance  at  masses  of  heathen  persons 
they  all  look  alike  to  us,  and  different  from 
persons  of  our  own  race.  There  is  room  in 
Christianity  for  whatever  is  racial  in  the  habits 
of  mind  of  the  different  peoples.  There  seem 
to  be  in  particular  races  distinctive  qualities, 
— as  the  artistic  tendencies  in  the  Japanese. 
We  are  not  attempting  any  pronouncements 
in  racial  psychology, — for  all  that  we  mean 
is,  for  example,  that  whether  innately  or  by 
acquired  habit  the  Japanese  have  Japanese 
artistic  abilities.  When  we  broaden  our  idea 
of  Christianity  enough  to  make  it  include  as 
essential  everything  which  makes  life  rich 
and  sweet  we  shall  rejoice  in  the  conversion 
of  alien  peoples  because  of  their  racial  qual- 
ities. What  can  these  be  but  gifts  of  God  ? 
Is  not  any  taste  for  beauty  an  echo  or  a  gleam 
from  the  Source  of  all  Beauty  ?  Is  not  any 
trait  of  intellectual  acuteness  a  revelation 
from  the  Divine  intellect  ?     Is  not  any  grace 


EVERY  KINDRED,  PEOPLE  AND  TONGUE   259 

of  personal  excellence  a  revelation  of  some 
glory  of  the  Supreme  Person?  After  our 
glance  at  the  Oriental  crowds  steadies  to  a 
gaze  the  sameness  dissolves  and  the  differ- 
ences in  individual  character  begin  to  stand 
out.  And  the  Christian  community  needs  all 
these  separate  persons  with  all  their  peculiar- 
ities of  character.  Needs  them  why  and 
how  ?  Needs  them  because  they  are  persons. 
Needs  them  just  as  persons  need  one  another. 
Needs  them  in  the  finest  and  purest  spiritual 
communion. 

Does  Christianity  lack  anything  which  can 
be  supplied  from  the  outside  systems  as  such  ? 
Here  we  fall  back  upon  our  conception  of  in- 
struments. The  systems  are  nothing  in  them- 
selves and  have  no  rights  of  their  own.  The 
only  question  then  is  as  to  how  much  of  these 
systems  can  be  utilized  for  Christianity  in  an 
instrumental  capacity.  We  profess  ourselves 
unable  to  see  much  that  is  precious  for  pres- 
ent-day use  in  the  heathen  doctrines  or  codes. 
They  do  not  furnish  healthy  inspiration,  or 
supply  wholesome  spiritual  food,  or  put  into 
the  hands  of  men  effective  spiritual  weapons 
of  offense  or  defense,  or  tools  for  construction 
in  the  religious  life  of  our  time.  A  fair  judg- 
ment would  probably  be  that  the  systems 
have  had  their  chance.     They  have  done  all 


26o  PERSONAL  CHRISTIANITY 

the  good  of  which  they  are  capable.  Some 
are  indeed  better  than  others,  but  all  are  in- 
adequate in  to-day's  crisis.  What  we  really 
desire  of  the  so-called  heathen  are  the  persons 
themselves  and  their  aptitudes.  Their  relig- 
ious views  are  not  suited  to  the  days  just 
ahead  of  us.  Many  heathen  religions  are  in- 
deed wonderful  inventions.  They  are  like 
the  American  Indian's  birch-bark  canoe — one 
of  the  most  marvellous  contrivances  ever  de- 
vised by  the  wit  of  man,  but  valuable  chiefly 
for  museum  purposes  to-day.  So  of  the  re- 
ligion of  the  American  Indian,  and  of  other 
non-Christian  races. 

We  must  not  be  understood  in  this  as  in- 
dicating a  willingness  to  throw  away  any- 
thing of  the  slightest  value.  The  concep- 
tions of  the  outside  religions  when  looked  at 
on  the  whole  and  in  the  main  are  apt  to  be 
disquieting.  We  can  pick  out  gems  of  moral 
precept  and  of  spiritual  insight  here  and 
there,  but  to  do  so  we  have  to  rummage 
through  heaps  of  rubbish, — to  use  no  stronger 
term.  If  there  are  items  of  these  systems 
worth  the  expense  of  hunting  them  out  by  all 
means  let  them  be  appropriated.  Gold  is 
gold,  but  after  we  have  paid  for  the  mine  and 
the  digging  and  the  cyanide  process  there 
may  not  be  any  gold  left.     It  is  more  likely 


EVERY  KINDRED,  PEOPLE  AND  TONGUE   261 

that  the  appropriation  will  be  that  of  the 
spiritual  capabilities  of  the  people  themselves 
which  are  powerful  engines  but  which  have 
never  been  steered  to  the  true  course.  If  the 
Hindu  has  developed  great  faculty  for  medi- 
tative brooding  the  faculty  can  be  used 
wonderfully  for  Christian  thinking, — and  the 
Hindu  will  have  something  worth  brooding 
over.  It  may  be  that  the  progress  of  the 
years  will  show  that  there  are  segments  of 
Christian  truth  which  are  more  adapted  to 
some  races  than  are  others,  and  it  may  be 
that  the  final  interpretation  of  these  segments 
cannot  come  until  the  outside  peoples  take 
hold  of  the  aspects  of  Christian  truth  for 
which  they  are  racially  fitted.  This  is  more 
likely  than  that  Christianity  will  discover 
much  in  heathen  theologies  of  which  to 
make  outright  seizure.  There  are  indeed 
among  the  outside  peoples  customs  which 
are  quaint  and  beautiful,  manners  which  are 
graceful  and  inimitable,  courtesies  which  are 
charming  and  fascinating.  It  would  be  sad 
indeed  if  the  world-wide  spread  of  Chris- 
tianity should  mar  any  of  this.  But  the 
virtue  of  these  peoples  is  not  chiefly  in  the 
content  of  their  religious  beliefs. 

It  ought  to  be  apparent  that  we  do  not 
imply  that  the  missionary  should  attempt  to 


262  PERSONAL   CHRISTIANITY 

introduce  Western  methods  and  habits  of  life, 
— say  to  Eastern  peoples.     He  is  to  introduce 
the  life  of  God  into  the  Eastern  hearts  and 
then  allow  that  divine  life  to  assume  whatever 
form   seems  most  appropriate.     If  the  mis- 
sionary relies  on  the  method  of  himself  liv- 
ing an  approximately  ideal  human  life  he  will 
accomplish  much  more  than  by  merely  formal 
preaching.     The  objection  that  missionaries 
bring  discredit  on  their  cause  by  living  in 
better  circumstances  than  do  the  people  to 
whom  they  minister  misses  an  essential  point 
most  wofully.     To  begin  with,  the  mission- 
ary cannot  live  as  do  the  people  around  him, 
and  in  the  next  place  he  ought  not  to  if  he 
could.     It  is  part  of  his  business  to  give  his 
people  an  object  lesson  in  what  the  normal 
human  life  means.     The  very  thoroughness 
with  which  he  cleans  his  premises  is  a  lesson. 
And  out  beyond  that  are  the  obvious  examples 
in   the  love  of  husband  and  wife  for  each 
other,  the  conscientious  training  of  children, 
the   kindliness    towards  the   neighbour,    the 
honesty  of  daily  marketing,  which  ought  to 
be  invaluable.     But  it  is  not  the  duty  of  the 
missionary  to  try  to  divert  Chinese  or  Indian 
Christianity  into  any  other  than  Chinese  or 
Indian  channels.     It  may  not  be  desirable  for 
the  Chinaman  to  wear  European  clothes,  or 


EVERY  KINDRED,  PEOPLE  AND  TONGUE   263 

to  eat  European  dishes,  or  to  speak  European 
language,  or  to  be  anything  but  a  Chinaman 
or  to  act  like  any  one  except  a  Chinaman  no 
matter  how  sincere  a  Christian  he  may  be. 

And  now,  as  we  draw  towards  the  close, 
we  avow  our  belief  that  the  progress  of  Chris- 
tianity in  foreign  fields  is  a  benefit  for  the 
instruments  of  the  Church,  considered  as 
instruments.  The  missionary  has  to  hold 
his  emphasis  to  the  right  place, — the  change 
of  the  life  of  the  convert.  He  is  not  apt 
to  be  led  into  over-stress  upon  this  or  that 
minor  detail  when  the  acceptance  of  faith 
can  mean  only  the  transformation  of  life. 
In  our  land  a  man  may  be  performing  sub- 
stantially Christian  duties  without  the  Chris- 
tian consciousness.  He  ought  to  dedicate 
his  powers  openly  to  the  Christian  God,  but 
the  outward  conduct  may  then  go  forward 
as  before.  It  may  not  be  necessary  for  him 
to  abandon  any  habit  whatsoever.  But  in  a 
foreign  land  the  transformation  has  often  to 
be  complete.  Habits  and  even  associations 
have  to  be  broken.  A  batde  is  to  be  fought. 
The  wise  missionary,  to  get  at  the  heart  of  a 
situation  like  this  with  the  great  essentials, 
must  keep  the  stress  on  the  features  of  the 
faith  that  really  count.  He  will  not  make 
much  of  denominational  definitions.     He  will 


264  PERSONAL  CHRISTIANITY 

not  rely  overmuch  upon  church  machinery. 
In  the  severer  trials  that  come  upon  him  he 
will  lean  most  upon  the  Master's  example  of 
immediate  contact  of  life  with  life.  He  wins 
by  being  first  a  Christian  man  and  after  that 
and  incidentally  a  minister  and  a  teacher. 

We  have  all  heard  the  story  of  the  found- 
ing of  a  very  important  Christian  school 
in  Korea.  The  workers  preached  for  years 
without  success  in  winning  converts.  They 
could  not  get  close  enough  to  the  people. 
One  year  the  cholera  struck  Seoul,  carrying 
off  the  people  by  hundreds.  The  dead  were 
so  numerous  that  burial  of  all  seemed  out  of 
the  question, — some  were  cast  on  the  gar- 
bage heaps  outside  the  city.  A  missionary 
walking  beyond  the  walls  came  upon  the 
body  of  a  child, — a  little  girl — on  a  heap  of 
refuse.  The  girl  had  been  cast  out  for  dead 
but  proved  to  be  alive.  There  was  no  place 
to  take  her  but  to  the  missionary's  home, 
and  there  she  recovered.  With  that  girl  as 
a  pupil  the  missionary  made  a  start  towards 
a  school,  for  he  saw  here  a  way  into  the  life 
of  the  people.  From  such  a  beginning  in 
closer  daily  contact  came  the  after  success. 
The  impulse  was  Christian,  the  method  was 
Christian,  the  outcome  has  been  Christian. 
Here  was  evidently  a  providential  opening 


EVERY  KINDRED,  PEOPLE  AND  TONGUE   265 

of  the  door  to  more  intimate  life  centres  of 
the  people.  The  Church  has  in  most  places 
come  upon  happier  times  than  those  in  older 
Korea,  but  in  the  abundance  of  the  new 
opportunity  she  ought  not  to  forget  the  em- 
phasis on  personal  values  and  personal  meth- 
ods which  is  the  centre  of  any  evangelism 
worthy  the  name  of  Christian. 


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of  belief.  It  is  a  frank  examination  and  apologetic  for 
Christianity,  by  one  who  is  well  known  now  as  the  author  of 
the  erstwhile  anonymous  books  "The  Christ  Ihat  is  to  Be" 
and  "Pro  Christo  et  Ecclesia." 

EDWIN  F.   H ALLEN  BECK 

The  Passion  for  Men 

l6mo,  cloth,   net   40c. 
A  series  of  straightforward  talks   on   the  imperative  duty 
of  soul   winning,  by  the   recent   asso'^inte  paster  of  the   Fifth 
Vvenue  Presbyterian  Church,   New   York. 


STUDIES  IN  CKRISTIAN  EXPERIENCE 

JAMES  A.  ANDERSON 

Religious  Unrest  and  Its  Remedy 

l2mo,  cloth,  net  75c. 

"In  this  remarkable  book — for  such  it  is — the  author  gives 
all  critics  full  credit  for  honest  deductions  and  honest 
doubters  will  admit  the  fairness  of  his  treatment  of  diffi- 
culties found  in  Biblical  interpretation.  1  he  writer  has  con- 
densed volumes  into  his  comparison  of  Christianity  with  other 
religions.  Must  be  satisfactory  to  any  honest  inquirer  after 
the    truth    of    Christianity." — Pittsburgh    Christian    Advocate, 

REV.   W.   K.   FLEMING,   M.A.,  B.D.        Library  oj 
_  _  .     .  .        >^t      •       •        •  Historical 

Mysticism  m  Christianity  Theology 

8vo,  cloth,  net  $1.50. 

"Successive  schools  of  thought  and  the  teachings  of  indi- 
vidual mystics,  together  with  the  most  recent  light  thrown 
upon  the  subject  by  writers  of  recognized  authority,  are 
combined  in  a  scholarly  yet  simple  narration  of  the  deeper 
spiritual  life." — Christian  Advocate. 

T.    T.    MARTIN 

Redemption  and  the  New  Birth 

l2n]o,  cloth,  net  $1.00. 

"A  rare  contribution.  Ihe  author  occupies  a  peculiar 
place  in  the  evangelistic  world.  There  is  none  other  like 
him.  No  other  man  is  bringing  such  messages  to  this  age. 
That  this  is  true,  his  book  will  give  ample  evidence.  It  de- 
serves wide  reading  and  will  must  certainly  be  read  with 
profit  and  delight  both  by  the  preachers  and  laymen." — 
Baptist  and  Reflector. 

PATTERSON  DUBOIS 

The  Practice  of  Salvation 

Trailing  a  Word  to  a  World  Ideal.     i2mo,  net  $1.00. 

Mr.  Uu  Bois,  who  is  so  well  known  to  Bible  teachers  and 
students  as  the  author  of  "The  Point  of  Contact  in  Teach- 
ing," and  "The  Natural  Way  in  Moral  Training,"  in  this, 
his  latest  volume,  interprets  salvation  in  the  terms  of  the 
new  psychology.  The  very  unconventional  and  untraditional 
character  of  the  work  will  commend  it  to  Christian  workers 
who  will  find  rare  spiritual  stimulus  and  inspiration  in  its 
pages. 

ELWIN  L  HOUSE,  P.P. 

The  Psychology  of  Orthodoxy 

8vo,  cloth,  net  $1.50. 

The  author  points  out  clearly  and  helpfully  the  relation 
between  or  the  comparative  value  of  what  may  be  called  the 
Psychological  Cults  and  the  Orthodox  Christian  position. 
Some  of  the  themes  interpreted  are  "The  Principles  of  Men- 
tal Healing,"  "The  Principles  of  Spiritual  Healing,"  "The 
Available  God,"  "The  God  of  Possession,"  "The  Conscious 
Mind,"  "Ihe  Sub-Conscious  Mind,"  "The  Power  of  Sugges- 
tion," "The  Psychology  of  Prayer."  "The  Builders  of  Health." 
"Spiritual  Healing,"  "The  Relation  of  the  Oiurch  to  New 
Thought  and  Christian   Science." 


STUDIES  IN  CHRISTIAN  EXPERIENCE 

MORA CE  EMO R Y  WA R NER,  P.P.         /'^''f/'ff ''/?  ^ 
a  J.  R.  Mott,  D.  D. 

The  Psychology  of  the  Chri^ian  Life 

Cvo,  cloth,  net  $1.50.  - 

"Dr.  Warner  has  written  something  new  and  thought- 
provoking.  The  method  is,  in  general,  that  of  the  empirical 
school  so  valiantly  championed  by  the  late  Prof.  William 
James.  Yet  cur  author  explores  a  narrower  field,  confining 
himself    rigidly    to    Christian    experience." — Book    Neivs. 

i).   A.    MURRAY,  P.P. 


Christian  Faith  and  the  New  Psychology 

8vo,  cloth,  net  $1.50. 

"Dr.  Murray  may  be  classed  among  the  mediators  be- 
tween modern  thought  and  evangelical  theology.  Evolution 
and  the  New  Psychology  are  to  hira  not  sources  of  difficulty 
as  a  Christian  thinker,  but  aids  to  faith.  It  is  one  of  the 
most  original  and  stimulating  books  in  the  field  of  Christian 
apologetics." — Tlie    Continent. 

THEOLOGICAL 


WILLIAM  ALEXANPER  GRIST 

The  Hi^oric  Chri^inthe  Faith  of  To-day 

8vo,  cloth,  net  $2.50. 

"It  would  be  difficult  to  exaggerate  the  value  and  sig- 
nificance of  this  new  study  of  the  historic  _  Christ ;  or  the 
singular  lucidity,  beauty  and  simplicity  of  its  style.  That 
it  should  be  the  work  of  a  writer  hitherto  comparatively 
unknown  makes  it  the  more  surprising.  It  is  not  a  life  of 
Christ,  in  the  ordinary  sense  of  the  term;  but  it  is  a  rever- 
ent study  and  vivid  presentation  of  the  commanding  figure 
in  human  history,  in  the  light  of  all  that  modern  scholarship 
has   disclosed." — Living  Age. 

GEORGE  COULSON  WORKMAN,  Ph.D.  {Leipsic) 

At-Onement ;  or  Reconciliation  with  God 

i2mo,  cloth,  net  $1.25. 
Dr.  Workman,  Late  Professor  of  Old  Testament  Exegesis 
ana  Literature  in  Weslyan  'iheological  College,  Montreal, 
and  author  of  "The  Old  Testament  Vindicated,"  lucidly 
presents  this  vital  subject  under  the  following  heads:  Atone- 
ment in  Itself,  in  God,  in  Christ,  in  Man.  in  Sncrifice,  in 
Death,  in  Suff^cring,  in  Service,  and  in  Theory.  Chancellor 
Burwash,  of  Victoria  University,  says:  "This  work  of 
great  importance,^  should  do  excellent  service  at  the  present 
time.  It  gives  Scriptural  emphasis  to  the  love  of  God  as 
the  source  of  man's  redemption." 


Princeton  Theological  Seminary  Libraries 


1    1012  01236  3067 


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